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ResFrac, a Leader in Advancing the Future of Subsurface Simulation, Receives Platform Investment from Banneker Partners

Banneker Partners (“Banneker”) today announced a platform investment in ResFrac Corporation (“ResFrac”), the developer of the industry’s only fully integrated reservoir simulation and hydraulic fracturing platform. ResFrac uniquely couples reservoir simulation and hydraulic fracture modeling, enabling engineers to model a well’s entire life cycle, from the moment rock is fractured through years of production, in a single, continuous simulation. This precision allows energy operators to test thousands of design scenarios in a virtual environment, optimizing completion design and maximizing resource recovery while minimizing capital risk.

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Latest content

Four men in suits pose behind a Nasdaq podium, holding a red Stanford banner with the Stanford tree logo on a stage backdrop that includes 'FERV0' energy branding.

Congratulations to Fervo on their IPO!

This week, I attended ResFrac customer Fervo Energy’s IPO on the Nasdaq. The positive energy was incredible. Roughly 100 people were there: Fervo employees, family, and members of the wider Fervo-supportive community. I was invited because ResFrac provides our software and services to Fervo, and also because I have been an advisor to the company since before its founding. As Jack reminded me this week, I introduced him and Tim! They founded Fervo around the same that ResFrac was being first released commercially, and they played an important role for our company because they were one of our earliest customers, and in turn, we were one of their first partners and vendors. Ever since then, ResFrac has been a core part of Fervo’s workflow in doing stimulation design and reservoir engineering.

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Banneker logo with a triangular emblem (dark and light blue) left of bold navy text on a pale blue background.

ResFrac, a Leader in Advancing the Future of Subsurface Simulation, Receives Platform Investment from Banneker Partners

Banneker Partners (“Banneker”) today announced a platform investment in ResFrac Corporation (“ResFrac”), the developer of the industry’s only fully integrated reservoir simulation and hydraulic fracturing platform. ResFrac uniquely couples reservoir simulation and hydraulic fracture modeling, enabling engineers to model a well’s entire life cycle, from the moment rock is fractured through years of production, in a single, continuous simulation. This precision allows energy operators to test thousands of design scenarios in a virtual environment, optimizing completion design and maximizing resource recovery while minimizing capital risk.

Read more

Technical articles

Production impact of horizontal fractures

At the 2025 SPE International Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference, we (Dontsov, Zoback, McClure, and Fowler) presented “Hydraulic Fracture Propagation Along Bedding Planes Might Be More Prevalent Than We Think” (SPE-226637). The paper reviewed case studies with evidence of horizontal or bedding plane fractures from microseismic, fiber optics, core observations, and casing deformation.

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Testing the new Kryvenko model for proppant washout

What controls proppant placement during hydraulic fracturing? As described in Chapter 8 from McClure et al. (2025), ResFrac incorporates a variety of physical processes – viscous drag, gravitational settling, hindered settling, clustered settling, bed slumping, and more. In addition, ResFrac accounts for the complex physics associated with proppant flowing out of the wellbore (Dontsov, 2023; Ponners et al., 2025).

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Horizontal fracture initiated along weak bedding plane or frictional interface in ResFrac

Horizontal hydraulic fractures in ResFrac

Horizontal hydraulic fracture propagation is believed to be widespread in shale plays where the frac gradient approaches the overburden – such as the Vaca Muerta, Utica, and Montney. However, horizontal propagation is nearly always ignored in hydraulic fracture modeling. In ResFrac, we are obsessed with ‘getting the physics right’, and so naturally, we extended our simulator to handle horizontal fracturing. The first version of this new capability was released earlier this year. We are eager to start collecting feedback from users, which will help us to fine tune the algorithm and workflow.

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ResFrac updates

Banneker logo with a triangular emblem (dark and light blue) left of bold navy text on a pale blue background.

ResFrac, a Leader in Advancing the Future of Subsurface Simulation, Receives Platform Investment from Banneker Partners

Banneker Partners (“Banneker”) today announced a platform investment in ResFrac Corporation (“ResFrac”), the developer of the industry’s only fully integrated reservoir simulation and hydraulic fracturing platform. ResFrac uniquely couples reservoir simulation and hydraulic fracture modeling, enabling engineers to model a well’s entire life cycle, from the moment rock is fractured through years of production, in a single, continuous simulation. This precision allows energy operators to test thousands of design scenarios in a virtual environment, optimizing completion design and maximizing resource recovery while minimizing capital risk.

Read more

What ‘company culture’ means to us

We recently held our annual company retreat. This is an important event because we are a fully remote company, and it gives us the chance to get together in-person and spend quality time. This year, we did the retreat in Houston, following URTeC and our annual symposium. We visited Space Center Houston, went to an Astros game, and ate BBQ and Tex-Mex. As a Houston native, I picked some of my favorite things to do in town! We also held a meeting on ‘company culture.’ I asked the group – how do you perceive our company culture? What do we do well, and what could we do better? Here are the highlights.

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Horizontal hydraulic fractures in shales: are they real?

In ResFrac, we are always challenging ourselves—what should we be doing better? What new capabilities should we add to the simulator? One of our newest projects is adding horizontal fracture propagation. Under most conditions, hydraulic fractures form vertically, not laterally. However, in specific circumstances, horizontal fractures develop. Sometimes, they form in addition to vertical fractures, and sometimes, they form exclusively without any vertical fractures. Horizontal fracture propagation has not conventionally been included in commercial hydraulic fracturing simulators, but we think this is a capability well-worth developing.

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Industry perspectives

Four men in suits pose behind a Nasdaq podium, holding a red Stanford banner with the Stanford tree logo on a stage backdrop that includes 'FERV0' energy branding.

Congratulations to Fervo on their IPO!

This week, I attended ResFrac customer Fervo Energy’s IPO on the Nasdaq. The positive energy was incredible. Roughly 100 people were there: Fervo employees, family, and members of the wider Fervo-supportive community. I was invited because ResFrac provides our software and services to Fervo, and also because I have been an advisor to the company since before its founding. As Jack reminded me this week, I introduced him and Tim! They founded Fervo around the same that ResFrac was being first released commercially, and they played an important role for our company because they were one of our earliest customers, and in turn, we were one of their first partners and vendors. Ever since then, ResFrac has been a core part of Fervo’s workflow in doing stimulation design and reservoir engineering.

Read more

Digesting the Bonkers, Incredible, Off-the-Charts, Spectacular Results from the Fervo and FORGE Enhanced Geothermal Projects

I’m out of superlatives – I used them all up in the title. But seriously – Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) projects have had a really, really good summer. In this article, I summarize the results that have been recently presented by Fervo and FORGE. At their annual Tech Day and in a white paper posted this week (Norbeck et al., 2024), Fervo Energy provided their first update on Project Cape, a Utah project where they are developing 400 MWe of new production over the next two years. So far, fourteen wells have been drilled, and three of them have been stimulated.

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