On June 25, 2026, we got the ResFrac community together both in-person at the ExxonMobil campus in Spring, Texas, and virtually around the globe for our Annual Symposium. With our community growing as fast as it is, the energy in the room was buzzing. We had a jam-packed day of operator case studies, deep-dive technical sessions, and some incredible geomechanical insights from industry legends.

If you couldn’t make it in person (or just want a handy recap to share with your team), here’s a run-through of how the day unfolded.

The ResFrac Mentality: We’re Here to Listen

To kick things off, we shared some big milestones that show just how much this community is ramping up. ResFrac is growing fast: our unique customer count is up 35% year-over-year, and platform usage has doubled in the last twelve months! We owe all of this growth to our phenomenal user base. Our mentality has always been simple: we’re here to build tools for you. Your feedback is what directly shapes our development roadmap. Over the next 12 months, we are investing heavily in major functionality upgrades to help you solve complex reservoir challenges even faster, including:

• High-Performance Computing (HPC) & Runtime Improvements: Speed is ever more popular, evidenced by more than 90% of simulations run on the platform today using the accelerated VM options. We are leaning in and will be providing  you with yet more options for faster simulations.
• Multi-Sector Coupled Modeling: Seamlessly capturing lateral variability.
• Reactive Transport: Enabling advanced modeling of acid reactions and chemical reactions (think hydrogen generation, etc.).
• Conventional Fracturing & EOR: Tailored functionalities expanding ResFrac’s capabilities beyond unconventional plays.

 

ARC Resources: Navigating Horizontal Fractures in the Montney

Presenters: Michelle Johnston (ARC Resources) & Sama Morsy (ResFrac)

We kicked off the technical sessions with an investigation into horizontal fracture behavior. In the Montney, the occurrence of horizontal fractures is variable—a phenomenon ARC suggests is a function of vertical stress variability.

Using diagnostic integration and 3D modeling, they demonstrated that in areas where horizontal fractures are prevalent, operators aren’t defenseless. We can engineer designs to mitigate their occurrence by adjusting cluster spacing and optimizing injection volumes. For those wanting a deep dive into the dataset and diagnostic steps, keep an eye out for their full paper at the upcoming Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference (HFTC).

 

Oxy: Optimizing Perforation and Erosion Uniformity

Presenter: Matt Jones (Occidental Petroleum)

Next up, Matt Jones walked us through Oxy’s work on perforation orientation modeling in the Delaware Basin. Matt Jones utilized ResFrac’s StageOpt App to illustrate three important points. Calibrating to Dark Vision erosion measurements, Matt showed that (1) erosion UI is NOT equal to proppant UI, (2) using erosion UI to optimize perf strategies can lead to errors, and (3) there is an optimum limited entry pressure drop (i.e. – more is not always better). Matt illustrated that understanding proppant UI is the key to optimizing perf strategies.

Using StageOpt, Oxy performed probabilistic analyses and optimizations of these orientations to arrive at robust, field-ready designs. This workflow provides engineers with a repeatable, reliable methodology to maximize cluster efficiency and lateral coverage.

 

ResFrac Technical Update: Introducing Multi-Sector Modeling

Presenters: Dr. Michael Nole & Dr. Danial Zeinabady (ResFrac)

Right before the lunch break, Michael and Danial introduced one of the most highly anticipated features slated for our next release: Multi-Sector Modeling.

The real-world likes to throw us variable model domains. Multi-sector modeling allows us to capture this variability explicitly, including:

• Geologic and geomechanical heterogeneity
• Laterals of different lengths within a pad
• Design and completion changes along the lateral

Depending on your specific goals and computational budget, you can choose to run these sectors as uncoupled or fully coupled systems and every stage across every well or stitch together multiple independent sectors.

 

Panel Discussion: “Measurements to Models to Money”

Moderator: Craig Cipolla (Senior Technical Advisor, ResFrac)

Panelists: Matt Jones (Oxy), Dr. Tim Benish (ExxonMobil), Lucas Martin (FourPoint Energy), and Brandon Williams (ConocoPhillips)

Our midday panel took on one of the classic debates in completion engineering: How do we justify the time and expense of modeling and diagnostics? The panel contrasted the application of “big data” ML models to identify important completion-production relationships with the ability of calibrated physics-based models to “read between the lines” and extrapolate, optimizing where big-data can’t, extending technologies, and revealing innovations

While critics often argue that building and calibrating complex models slows down development timelines, the panel offered an astute and counterintuitive rebuttal: Models actually accelerate decision-making velocity.

In the early stages of a well’s life, physical data is scarce, and signal-to-noise ratios are low. By integrating early diagnostics into a physics-based framework, operators can separate reservoir signal from operational noise much faster than waiting on long-term production decline curves alone.

The panel also discussed how the questions we ask of our models naturally evolve based on data availability—moving from early-stage diagnostic matching to late-stage predictive optimization—and shared their best practices for building organizational trust in simulation results over time.

Anschutz Exploration: Taming the Bronco of the Powder River Basin

Presenter: Madalene “Maggie” Albrecht (Anschutz Exploration)

Maggie kicked off our afternoon presentations with a fantastic, highly visual (and artistic) talk on modeling workflows in the Rocky Mountains.

In a memorable comparison, she noted that while some operators might view the Permian Basin as a highly predictable, uniform “red velvet sheet cake,” developing the Powder River Basin is more akin to “taming a wild bronco.” The structural and geomechanical heterogeneity of the Powder River Basin requires a rigorous calibration workflow to get right – and can vary as you traverse the basin. Anschutz successfully built strong organizational confidence in their ResFrac models by utilizing blind testing with optimization overlays. This proved to their broader team that a highly calibrated physical model can consistently and accurately predict real-world production and pressure responses, taming the uncertainty of the basin.

Dr. Mark Zoback: Fundamental Geomechanics and Stress Relaxation

Presenter: Dr. Mark Zoback (Stanford University / ResFrac Advisor)

We wrapped up the technical presentations with a masterclass in geomechanics from Dr. Mark Zoback. He presented on the critical implications of Viscoplastic Stress Relaxation (VSR) for predicting hydraulic fracture propagation.

In his classic, engaging style, Dr. Zoback offered a memorable analogy: “If hydraulic fractures were people, they’d be stupid and lazy—they only propagate in the absolute easiest way possible.” While reservoir development will always be plagued by geological uncertainties, Dr. Zoback reminded us of a fundamental truth: You must start with the correct geomechanical and stress framework grounded in the right physics. Dr. Zoback presented a convincing review of the viscoplastic stress relaxation (VSR) model and its realism benefits versus legacy methods. If your baseline stresses are physically impossible, no amount of model tweaking will yield the correct predictive behavior.

The Key Takeaway

In conclusion, our goal is to be the go-to numerical platform for modeling fractured assets. We do that by listening to you. That has worked for the last 8+ years and will continue to. Our first symposium in 2019 had 41 attendees. Last week, 178 of you attended the symposium (in person and online) from seven countries across the globe. So please, keep the input coming, and our reciprocal commitment is to continue improving the tools you use.  Physics-based models are a critical piece of subsurface workflows for optimizing challenging reservoirs by providing a robust framework that accelerates decision-making and disambiguates signal from noise.

Huge thanks to our hosts at ExxonMobil, our incredible presenters, and all of our users who attended and contributed to the discussion.

If you want to discuss how to implement these multi-sector workflows, learn more about StageOpt, or start calibrating a model for your own asset, please reach out to me directly!