Trabajo presentado en el 24 WGC. Disponible en CD en la biblioteca. Solicite este trabajo por email a biblio@iapg.org.ar

The development of tight gas resources brings new challenges to the industry. Many tight gas resources that are being targeted today were not considered to have significant production potential as recently as five years ago, and the ability to routinely produce these hydrocarbon resources at an economic rate can still be a major barrier. Technology can help to address this barrier, and can transform these resources from sporadic production, linked directly to product price, to successful field developments. Tight gas can be defined in several ways, with a maximum reservoir permeability of 0.1mD being one approach, and a more general definition being a gas reservoir that cannot be produced at economic rates (or recover economic volumes) without well stimulation. Tight gas production is characterized by a relatively short period of higher production that declines rapidly, followed by a very long period of low production which declines slowly. A tight gas well can have a productive life of more than 50 years, with the actual longevity being impacted by the ability to remove liquids from such wells (as production rate and reservoir pressure declines) or, ultimately, by the operating cost of the low rate well exceeding the economic benefit of the production. Improving the early life performance of tight gas can have a large impact on the economic attractiveness of a well, but having the ability to manage the late life well performance directly impacts the reserves recovered by the well, impacting the required well spacing for field development. Technology has a large role in enabling the development of tight gas resources; without the application of new technology many tight gas resources would remain uneconomic and would not be developed. Several technologies have been actively progressed and applied that are driving significant improvements in our tight gas delivery. When applied in an integrated manner, these technologies have helped to transform some of our tight gas developments