American Oil and Gas Reporter - September 2015 - 79

TED
DOHMEN

Ted Dohmen is senior geophysical
adviser, technology and excellence, at
Hess Corporation in Houston, where he
is involved in researching geophysical
technology for enhancing unconventional assets. Dohmen is a member of the
unconventional technology group in
technology and excellence at Hess. He
has been with Hess for four years, joining the company after retiring from a 32year career at ConocoPhillips. Dohmen
holds an M.S. in geophysics from Stanford University.

FIGURE 8
Microseismic Event Depth Histograms (29-Stage Bakken Well)
1,200
1,100
1,000
900
800
700
600

Delta_Z (ft)

example, the production of water from
units outside the zone of interest).
Except for stages 11 and 18, which
show some height growth related to faults
or natural fractures, the rest of the stages
in well C show a cyclical series of rising
and falling steps. The 10,000-foot lateral
was geosteered to remain within the Middle Bakken (the red line represents the top
of the Middle Bakken layer). The histograms extend into the deeper Three
Forks, and contact with this oil-productive
zone may account for some variation in
stage-to-stage production.
We expect that different stress profiles
and different mechanical properties of the
layers surrounding the borehole would lead
naturally to differences in how the stages
interact. While patterns from the Utica and
Bakken plays are different, the basic observation of cyclical bounces in the microseismic activity seems to be common.
Rather than drilling many wells to
separate the effect of a given completion
strategy from the normal geologic variations that influence production, we believe

Stage No.
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

500
400
300
200
100
0
-100
-200
-300
-400

microseismic analysis will make it possible to confidently determine optimal stage
spacing for a given play with a reasonable
cost/production improvement ratio. ❒
Editor's Note: The authors acknowledge Hess Corporation's Bakken and
Utica teams for their assistance in the hydraulic fracturing and microseismic mon-

JON JINCAI
ZHANG

Jon Jincai Zhang has served as a senior geophysical adviser at Hess Corporation since 2012, focusing on pore pressure
and fracture gradient prediction, and
stress cage analysis. Previously, he was a
staff petrophysical engineer at Shell E&P
Company for pore pressure prediction and
related geomechanics analysis. Zhang
has more than 25 years of worldwide experience in pore pressure prediction, rock
mechanics, and geomechanics. He holds a
Ph.D. in petroleum and geological engineering from the University of Oklahoma.

itoring analyses project referenced in this
article. For more detailed information on
the conceptual stress shadow analytical
modeling solution or its application, see
SPE 170924, a technical paper presented
at the Society of Petroleum Engineers'
2014 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition, held Oct. 27-29 in Amsterdam.

JEAN-PIERRE "J.P."
BLANGY

Jean-Pierre "J.P." Blangy is a global director (chief geophysicist) for Hess
Corporation. He has more than 25 years
of experience in senior technical and leadership roles in multiple basin settings and
international ventures. Before joining
Hess in 2010, Blangy held management
and technical positions in operations, exploration, and new business ventures in
the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. onshore, Russia,
South America, and the North Sea at BP,
Amoco and Unocal. He has a B.S. in geophysics from the Colorado School of
Mines, an M.S. in exploration geology and
geophysics from Stanford University, an
M.S. in petroleum engineering from the
University of Houston, and a Ph.D. in
petrophysics from Stanford. He also is a
graduate of the Wharton Business
School's executive development program.

SEPTEMBER 2015 79

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