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.

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).

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.

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.