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Predicting sedimentary lithofacies and mapping carbonate gravity flows in the Wolfcamp A & B, Midland Basin, Texas, USA
Neale, Selena K.
Neale, Selena K.
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2023
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Abstract
The A and B benches of the Wolfcamp Formation in Midland Basin, Tx consist of interbedded mudrocks and carbonate gravity flows. The complex, heterogeneous nature of these benches make the upper Wolfcamp Formation a challenge for oil and gas operators to drill and complete. Oil and gas operators can improve return on investment in wells they drill by better picking well targets, paths, and completion strategies by knowing how and where the Wolfcamp A and B’s lithologies occur. This can be achieved through predicting sedimentary lithofacies from logged-while-drilling, wireline, and core-derived mineralogy data. Using core-derived mineralogy data, sedimentary lithofacies of siltstone, mudrock, carbonate, calcareous siltstone/mudrock, and silty/muddy carbonate are created in the Wolfcamp A and B benches of two vertical wells in Martin and Midland Counties in the central region of the Midland Basin.
The five sedimentary lithofacies labels and wireline features are the training and testing data for a multi-layer perceptron supervised machine learning algorithm, which produces a trained sedimentary lithofacies predicting model. Eight Wolfcamp A horizontal wells and sixteen Wolfcamp B horizontal wells with Logging While Drilling (LWD) gamma ray, Fracture ID Young’s Modulus, Fracture ID Poisson’s Ratio, and pseudo-wireline data were run through the trained model. The model then predicts sedimentary lithofacies along the entire length of the horizontal wells. These lithofacies are plotted in 2D map-view where similar facies packages and potential carbonate gravity flows are identified in wells targeting the same zones of the Wolfcamp A and B . Operators may then employ this process to create 2D maps of target formations to enhance completion economics and avoid hazardous drilling conditions.
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