This disclosure provides a method of optimizing well spacing for shale gas development. It belongs to the technical field of hydrocarbon reservoir exploration and development. The method comprises: firstly verifying block area based on the explored geological structure; analyzing the connection situation of a shale reservoir, identifying the minimum developing area units; calculating the recoverable reserves of the units, confirming the candidate units; drilling representative shale cores and analyzing related physical properties; calculating seepage field and pressure field using unified multi-field, multi-flow-regime, and multi-scale mathematical models; calculating the effective recoverable area of each well; and arranging wells based on the rule that the interference among wells is not larger than 10%. Considering the fluid-solid coupling effects, this method can define appropriately well spacing for shale gas exploration and enhance effectively the output of shale gas.

A system and method is provided for restoring a 3D tomographic model of the Earth's subsurface geology from the present-day to a past restoration time. Whereas at the present time all faults represent active discontinuities, at a past restoration time some faults have not yet formed. Accordingly, the restored model divides the fault network into -active faults (discontinuous surfaces for faults that intersect the layer deposited at the past restoration time) and -inactive faults (continuous surfaces for faults that do not intersect the layer deposited at the past restoration time). A new 3D restoration transformation is also provided that uses linear geological constraints to process the restoration model in less time and generate more accurate geological images.

A system and method is provided for restoring a 3D tomographic model of the Earth's subsurface geology from the present-day to a past restoration time. Whereas at the present time all faults represent active discontinuities, at a past restoration time some faults have not yet formed. Accordingly, the restored model divides the fault network into -active faults (discontinuous surfaces for faults that intersect the layer deposited at the past restoration time) and -inactive faults (continuous surfaces for faults that do not intersect the layer deposited at the past restoration time). A new 3D restoration transformation is also provided that uses linear geological constraints to process the restoration model in less time and generate more accurate geological images.

A method for planning and drilling a well includes receiving geomechanical and geological data for a subterranean domain, and receiving an initial well trajectory including a well path and survey points. The method includes conducting a wellbore stability analysis along the well trajectory based in part on the geomechanical and geological data. Conducting the wellbore stability analysis includes identifying a subset of the well path intervals along the well trajectory as having a risk for instability. The method includes calculating a geomechanics nudge for one or more survey points along the well trajectory. The geomechanics nudge is calculated as a derivative of the wellbore stability at the one or more survey points. The method includes modifying the one or more survey points and the one or more well path intervals connected thereto based in part on the geomechanics nudge to generate a modified well trajectory.

A method is described for seismic imaging that will produce a seismic image with correctly focused and positioned reflectors. This is accomplished by adding physical geological information to a beam tomography process to generate an updated earth model for the seismic imaging. The method may be executed by a computer system.

The present disclosure provides a method for optimizing bunch distance of fractured horizontal wells of shale gas, which relates to the technical field of oil exploration. The method comprises first establishing a stress field distribution model for a single fracture; then establishing an induced stress distribution model of segmented single-bunch fracturing for a horizontal well; later establishing an induced stress distribution model of segmented multi-bunch fracturing for a horizontal well; last optimizing fracturing parameters and fracture distance according to the distribution pattern of the induced stress difference.

The method considers the stress barrier, stress interference effects, and the variation of the effective net pressure during the synchronous expansion of fractures, so the calculation model is more in line with the actual working conditions, has higher precision, and can provide more accurate theoretical guidance for the optimization design of segmented multi-bunch fracturing of a horizontal well.

Reservoir management based on unstructured grid reservoir simulation is improved with machine learning based intelligent automation. Reservoir heterogeneity, geological internal boundary features and well geometry complexity are taken into account to automatically detect well zone and focusing reservoir area by calculating the region-of-interests in the model and defining cell spacing for grid coarsening and refinement in the reservoir. Data points for wells in the reservoir are grouped into reservoir regions according to datasets organized as a convex hull, which is a minimum convex set in spatial geometry which encloses the totality of such data points. The reservoir regions form a basis for grid spacing utilized in the reservoir model.

Systems and methods for simulating an effect of multiple seismic sources concurrently on a geologic formation are provided. Data is read from a seismic source file that describes at least two seismic source types. The concurrent propagation of acoustic energy from the at least two seismic sources types through the geologic formation is modeled. A seismic output file is then generated.

The invention is a method for optimizing working (EXP) of a deposit of fluid traversed by a network of fractures that involves determining the transitory exchange terms between matrix blocks and fractures (FFA, FFN), for any type of available information (INFO) concerning the network of fractures, regardless of the level of knowledge of the fractured environment.

A global objective function is initialized to an initial value. A particular model simulation process is executed using prepared input data. A mismatch value is computed by using a local function to compare an output of the particular model simulation process to corresponding input data for the particular model simulation process. Model objects associated with the particular model simulation process are sent to another model simulation process. An optimization process is executed to predict new values for input data to reduce the computed mismatch value.