Past Events

The pursuit of oil, heavy oil and liquids dominated activity in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in 2018. The differentials between West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and the major western Canadian crudes (Western Canada Select (WCS) and Edmonton Light Sweet Crude) became more problematic as the year progressed and impacted companies’ budgets for 2019.

Hydrodynamic techniques have been used to aid exploration and development for decades. Primarily applied to conventional plays, we have historically pointed their application to reservoirs that could roughly be termed as dynamic (active fluid flow) or static (sluggish to very little fluid flow) and employed somewhat different techniques to further our understanding. In both cases, the techniques required some degree of reservoir permeability and hence pressure continuity. With the focus today on Unconventional (tight to very tight) reservoirs, the basic premise of these techniques no longer apply. Pressure continuity, what’s that? We use several case studies from the Montney Formation to exemplify how the application of hydrodynamics has evolved as exploration focus moved from Conventional to Deep Basin and Transitional hydrodynamic systems.

The pursuit of oil, heavy oil and liquids dominated activity in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in 2018. The differentials between West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and the major western Canadian crudes (Western Canada Select (WCS) and Edmonton Light Sweet Crude) became more problematic as the year progressed and impacted companies’ budgets for 2019. This analysis highlights the trends and geological zones that industry pursued in 2018.