Chris Hewson

Senior Simulation Engineer

[email protected]

Chris Hewson is a Reservoir Simulation Engineer with ResFrac responsible for programming the reservoir simulator of ResFrac.

Prior to joining ResFrac, Chris was a Reservoir Simulation Engineer at Cenovus Energy, where he worked on an internal reservoir simulation software for modeling thermal oil recovery, a history matching and optimization software, and shifting the software to cloud use. Prior to Cenovus, Chris worked for The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research working on reservoir simulation studies and software for NOCs, Majors and Independent oil companies across the Middle East and Europe. During his internship, Chris worked at Equinor in Norway as a Reservoir Engineer evaluating offshore heavy oil completion techniques.

Chris obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Calgary and a Master of Science degree in Petroleum Engineering from Delft University of Technology.

Chris is passionate about backcountry skiing, mountain biking, and golf (he formerly worked as a golf pro). He’s married to a wonderful Wisconsinite who, despite his best efforts, refuses to switch to the metric system. They have an energetic 3-year-old son who loves trucks, cars, and basically anything that moves.

Click here for a list of Chris’ publications.

Chris's posts

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

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.

Advanced ‘proppant transport in the well’ capabilities are now implemented in ResFrac!

Proppant transport in the well is an intriguing topic that has attracted a lot of interest in recent years [1-8]. Proppant transport processes determine the uniformity of proppant placement, which has a direct impact on productivity. Cipolla et al. estimate that the difference between poor and excellent proppant uniformity is about $2.5M in net present value per well.

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.