Over the past several years, the shale industry has successfully lowered costs through improved drilling and completion efficiencies. Meanwhile, reservoir geoscience applications, which can further optimize operations, have not received the same level of focus. Incremental cost associated with reservoir data acquisition and time required for interpretation are often perceived counterculture to the dominant cost-efficiency mindset. On the contrary, as operating efficiency approaches a plateau, refocusing on geoscience presents exactly the opportunity that unconventional operators need to further reduce total cost per barrel.

By leveraging fit-for-purpose measurements that are acquired at key points during the unconventional project life cycle and coupling them with efficient workflows that render acquired subsurface data timely and useful for operational decisions, operators can achieve several key objectives. One of these includes landing laterals with improved placement to unlock maximum producible hydrocarbons.

At the start of the project, acreage is typically selected, leased and ranked for potential based on legacy well logs, nearby production information, and possibly seismic, if available. The vertical section of the first well drilled provides a critical opportunity to deploy the right modern technology to answer the following make-or-break questions:

• Are the hydrocarbons economically producible?
• What is the optimum landing point for laterals?
• What is an appropriate well spacing?

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