BRISBANE, Australia -- North American operators have drilled and completed tens of thousands of onshore horizontal wells in the past decade; Australian operators are working hard to crack their first 100. In a conversational roundtable at Hart Energy’s DUG Australia Conference & Exhibition, experts from the operations and services sector shared their thoughts on the lessons Australia could take from the North American experience.

A principal lesson learned in North America is that explorationists must quickly develop comprehensive knowledge about the reservoirs. In Australia, this is particularly challenging because of sparse existing subsurface control. “Key immediate challenges for unconventional resources in Australia include understanding stress regimes and rock mechanics,” said Kevin Schepel, executive vice president, exploration and production, ZaZa Energy. Such attributes as physical rock data, sequence stratigraphy, kerogen typing and the relationships between reservoir energy and depth are crucial. “Every reservoir is different, and you have to understand the facies and rock mechanics to correctly design the frac.”

For ZaZa, a U.S. independent active in Texas, this meant pulling thousands of feet of whole core in its early efforts in the Eagle Ford play. “It’s very critical to collect as much data as possible up front,” he said. The company was aggressive in sharing this data with other operators, and it worked closely with service companies to help prototype new oilfield tools. Collaboration and sharing are essential, whether through research groups, consortiums or informal relationships.

Certainly, one of the technical challenges in Australia is the scale of the reservoirs, in terms of geographic expanses and thickness of sections. “It’s very difficult to determine which part of that play to go after, and which specific layers we need to target,” said Steve Travis, Cooper Basin operations director, Baker Hughes. “It’s so expensive to construct these wellbores. To be able to apply capital in the right place is a key challenge. You need to know absolutely everything you can about the properties of the rocks and fluids you are working with.”

Custom designs are essential, rather than cutting and pasting a completion plan from a previous well. “Every operator develops a preferred completion plan,” said Schepel. There are many variables and they are operator-specific, so a standard template will likely not work. “There are new completion techniques being derived every day, but the completions have to be designed specifically to match the reservoirs.”

Both processes and technologies are important. “The best practice is to get as much information upfront as possible, including reliable petrophysical data. That will set you up with the right model to get the right result,” Travis said. “You have to have a feedback loop, in which you model upfront, try a frac, and then go back and adjust the model.”

It’s also critical that people work together. “Technology is great, but if you don’t have everyone on the same page it is not going to be successful,” Travis said. “We have to get away from guesswork and throwing horsepower at every stage.”

Costs are an eternal issue in Australia’s onshore, and techniques to lower costs have been aggressively pursued in North America. Panelists recommended a systems approach to remove extra equipment and streamline processes to help lower costs and make operations more efficient.

In North America there’s been a lot of “monkey see, monkey do,” said Stephen Chauffe, vice president, engineering and new technology, TEAM Oil Tools. “You want to look at what the other guys are doing and why they are doing it, and then see how that actually relates to your properties.”

Finally, keep up with trends in North America. “We are seeing a big shift in the U.S. toward cemented laterals and the use of sleeve technology. There are time savings and horsepower savings, and these also allow you to eliminate some of the coiled tubing and wireline services,” says Chauffe. Australian operators can look at these new methods to determine if they too can get to their desired completion more efficiently and with less cost.