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Fracturing guidance provides
efficiency, improved completions
by Lee Toop, Editor
F
luctuating oil prices such as
the industry has seen in recent
months often mean that new
wells must produce quickly and
perform well over time to ensure good
return. Fracturing operations need to be
performed efficiently and effectively to
be certain the well can produce at its best.
Advancements in fracturing models
have helped increase efficiencies in new
well bores, but there are always improvements that can be made. One service
company is now offering producers a
new completions optimization service for
unconventional wells that can increase
their efficiency significantly.
“Over the last year or so we’ve been
talking with operators who have boiled
things down to three challenges,” said
Nicole Braley, global strategic marketing
manager with oilfield services company
Weatherford. “First, especially with
current oil prices and in unconventionals in general, the important focus is on
cost reduction and efficiency. Second is
increased production, but being able to
manage the uncertainty between well
production variants. Third is the need to
consider environmental footprint and regulation adherence. With those three things
in mind, we’ve come up with a technique
that leads to a design of completions from
a more engineered standpoint.”
Weatherford’s FracAdvisor takes the
concept of geometric hydraulic fracturing
design and improves on it by determining better placement for each stage of the
process.
“Operators need to be more efficient
and reduce the cost of completions,
which can be 60 to 70 percent of the well
cost,” Braley said. “A driller may go
geometrically across the lateral and frack
every 200 or 300 feet... then they may
look back and wonder if they have left
any rocks behind. Have they optimized
the placement of the stage?”
If the stages aren’t placed precisely in
the best spots to ensure production, costs
can mount quickly, Braley noted. That’s
where FracAdvisor comes in.
“We can take into account the reservoir and understand the science of it – by
looking at the type of rock, the closure
stress, brittleness and a number of other
aspects,” she said. “If we optimize where
the stages should be, it may not be every
250 feet – one stage may be longer, the
next may be shorter. We believe that if we
can optimize the placement and perforation in each stage, then every one has the
opportunity to contribute to hydrocarbon
production.”
FracAdvisor takes a range of data
points, from logging information to
seismic data and others, to formulate
an overall view of the formation being
drilled through. It considers hydrocarbon
potential, natural fractures and mechanical properties of the rock involved, then
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predicts where fracturing will have the
greatest and most efficient effect.
“That’s how FracAdvisor is different:
it looks at different aspects within the reservoir and how they should be weighted
according to the play and specific lateral,” Braley described. “We look at those
qualities and tell the operator ‘here’s
where to put your stages.’ We weight
those attributes based on our knowledge
and the importance of those attributes.”
Operators provide Weatherford’s
experts the necessary data, and often a
solution can be turned around within 24
hours, Braley noted. In addition, the company can monitor wells, then make use of
that information to improve other wells in
that formation.
Results thus far have been positive.
“A big problem with unconventionals
is a rapid decline curve in production; if
they can level that out it really helps their
balance sheet,” she said. “What we see on
the preliminary data is initial production
rates will spike, but the decline thereafter isn’t as steep as we normally see, so
initial production rates are increased.”
More deliberate and focused drilling and fracturing operations can be the
key to efficiency and continued profit
for drillers who will continue to work
through lower oil prices, Braley said.
Weatherford
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Oil & Gas Product News n March/April 2015
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