Thomas Finkbeiner

Senior Technical Advisor

[email protected]

ResFrac is honored to welcome Dr. Thomas Finkbeiner to the team as a Senior Technical Advisor.

Thomas has long been a notable voice in the geomechanics world. After receiving his PhD from Stanford University, Thomas started his career in 1998 with GeoMechanics International (GMI), and subsequently held roles with Baker Hughes and OMV. Since 2016, Thomas has been a research professor at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, focusing his research on geo- and rock mechanics, rock physics, CO2 sequestration, and geothermal development. 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.

Thomas's posts

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.

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.

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.