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Automated History Matching and Economic Optimization of an Eagle Ford Refrac
In this blog post, we review a refracturing and economic optimization case study. The model and history match are loosely based on “SPE Data Repository Well #1,” a publicly available refracturing and production dataset from the Eagle Ford shale. This post extends the analysis that we presented at a recent SPE workshop, “What New for PTA and RTA”.
ResFrac Retreat in Colorado
For the first time in more than two years, the entire (almost!) ResFrac team gathered in Denver. We mixed education (thank you to our friends at Liberty Services for showing us the nuts and bolts of frac’ing)…… with fun.
Commentary on Four New DFIT Papers: (a) Direct In-Situ Measurements of Fracture Opening/Closing from the EGS Collab Project; (b) Comparison of Stress Measurement Techniques from the Bedretto Project; (c) a Statistical Summary of 62 DFITs Interpretations Across Nine Shale Plays; and (d) A Different Perspective: An Article Advocating the Use of the Tangent Method
This post provides commentary on recent four papers on diagnostic fracture injection testing (DFIT). The first paper uses in-situ deformation measurements to directly observe fractures opening and closing during fracture injection-falloff tests (Guglielmi et al., 2022). The second compares various stress measurement techniques in a series of fracture/injection tests from the Bedretto project (Bröker and Ma, 2022). The third statistically reviews results from applying the interpretation procedure from McClure et al. (2019) to 62 DFITs across nine different shale plays (McClure et al., 2022). The fourth is an op-ed written in JPT (Journal of Petroleum Technology) by an advocate of the tangent method for estimating DFIT closure stress (Buijs, 2021; 2022). This article presupposes that the reader already has familiarity with these topics. If you would like more background, please refer to McClure et al. (2019).
Notable Papers from SPE HFTC 2022
The SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference (HFTC) was last week. There were tons of great, practically relevant, papers. People are really locked-in on the key value drivers. This blog post gives a sampling of a few of the papers that I found most interesting. I don’t discuss any of the ResFrac papers because they were in a previous blog post.
Four ResFrac papers at HFTC 2022!
We at ResFrac are coauthoring four papers at HFTC. The papers describe a parent/child case study performed with Devon in the SCOOP/STACK, our new automated history matching and economic optimization tools, a new crack propagation algorithm designed to improve numerical accuracy and handling of thin layers, and a modeling study on application of multistage hydraulic fracturing for geothermal energy extraction.
Understanding fracture morphology
Field scale hydraulic fracture simulations reveal a variety of complex fracture geometries. Very often stress interaction between the fractures leads to very asymmetric fracture growth within a stage. At the same time, for some other cases, all the fractures are more regularly shaped and symmetric. This blog post presents results of numerical simulations and analysis demonstrating how fracture morphology changes versus problem parameters for some fundamental cases. The results can be used to better understand the observed fracture complexity in a field scale simulation or as a guideline to achieve the desired fracture morphology.
Why Multistage Stimulation Could Transform the Geothermal Industry
Flow rate is a major challenge for geothermal. However, the techniques used in shale to prevent flow localization can be applied directly to geothermal. If we can create hundreds or thousands of flowing fracture pathways around a horizontal or deviated geothermal well, then we will have truly “changed the game.” Read the article at the Journal of Petroleum Technology.
