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Detailed technical articles, company updates, and industry perspectives

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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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Previewing the Seven(!) ResFrac Papers to be Presented at the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference

Next week, ResFrac will be coauthoring seven papers at the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC). These papers include: operator case studies in the Haynesville, Marcellus, and Bakken, a study quantifying the effect of proppant uniformity on production and economics, a new procedure generalizing the Devon Quantification of Interference (DQI) method, and an excellent paper by a University of Texas PhD student on proppant flowback.

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Technical articles

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.

Read more

Recent Recorded Talks on EGS and DFIT

Below are links to watch two recently recorded talks. The first was a presentation with ThinkGeoEnergy discussing the impressive results from Fervo Energy’s recent Project Red pilot. The second was a presentation with whitson summarizing the URTeC-2019-123 compliance method procedure for interpreting DFITs. If you are interested in either topic, please check them out!

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ResFrac updates

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

Welcoming Dr. Thomas Finkbeiner to the team as a Senior Technical Advisor

ResFrac is honored to welcome Dr. Thomas Finkbeiner to the team as a Senior Technical Advisor. Having lived many years in the region and consulted with Saudi Aramco and others, Thomas brings valuable technical and regional expertise to the ResFrac team. We look forward to his contribution as we develop and penetrate the rapidly growing Middle East market.

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Industry perspectives

Previewing the Seven(!) ResFrac Papers to be Presented at the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference

Next week, ResFrac will be coauthoring seven papers at the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC). These papers include: operator case studies in the Haynesville, Marcellus, and Bakken, a study quantifying the effect of proppant uniformity on production and economics, a new procedure generalizing the Devon Quantification of Interference (DQI) method, and an excellent paper by a University of Texas PhD student on proppant flowback.

Read more

Notable papers from the 2024 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference

Last week wrapped another outstanding SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference. Every year, I write a blog post highlighting notable HFTC papers. Here is this year’s edition! As in past years, this is not an attempt to pick the ‘best’ papers. It’s a selection of papers that I personally found insightful, based on my own interests and specialization.

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Fervo Energy’s ‘Project Red’ Results Are a Historic Breakthrough for Geothermal Energy – What Comes Next?

Fervo Energy announced the results from their ‘Project Red’ pilot in northern Nevada (Norbeck and Latimer, 2023; Ma, 2023). The results are spectacular. For nearly 50 years, the goal of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (aka, Hot Dry Rock) has been to convert low permeability, hot formations into economically viable geothermal reservoirs (Murphy et al., 1977). Success has been elusive. During stimulation, flow tends to localize into a small number of flowing fracture pathways. This limits the flow capacity and heat sweep efficiency of the resulting reservoir.

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