Understanding Waterfracs

Vincent, Michael C.
CARBO Ceramics, Inc, Golden, CO

     It is safe to assume that our industry has never placed a truly "optimized" waterfrac. Most engineers will admit that we really don't have a good understanding of the created fracture geometry, the realistic proppant placement, or the resulting velocity of produced gas within these fracs. This presentation will touch on the following topics:
     * Frac Geometry achieved in some waterfracs
     * Proppant Transport - videos and settling rates with various particle sizes and densities
     * Unpropped fractures - how much conductivity can we hope for?
     * What happens to proppant in narrow fracs? Can I rely on standard crush measurements?
     Additionally, this presentation will share a novel waterfrac design recently implemented, in which the operator reduced the total treatment size, incorporated several different proppant diameters, and altered the pumping rates to improve the well productivity. The first 5 wells with these smaller but improved treatments have been on-line for over 6 months, and are producing higher production rates than offset wells using the previous treatment design which used much higher proppant mass. While we still don't understand enough to truly optimize waterfracs, participants in this presentation should gain a useful mental model of what is going on in waterfracs so we can continue to make design improvements.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90071 © 2007 AAPG Rocky Mountain Meeting, Snowbird, Utah