About

Chris Ponners

Reservoir and Completions User Success Lead

Christopher Ponners is a Senior Reservoir and Completions Engineer, as well as the Reservoir and Completions User Success Lead at ResFrac where he uses physics-based modeling to explore development projects with the dual goal of economic optimization and enhancing subsurface knowledge.

He brings a background in energy finance with experience in the mineral rights and mezzanine financing spaces, having conducted production forecasting, reserves evaluations, economic analyses, and the development plan appraisals in all major U.S. shale basins.

Prior to joining ResFrac, he served as Managing Director at Meadowood Energy Partners and as Reservoir Engineer at Tregan Energy Partners, mineral and royalty interest investment firms. Chris also has reservoir engineering experience with Apache Corporation and Netherland, Sewell & Associates where he performed extensive reservoir modeling, fracture characterization, and directional drilling optimization.

Chris received a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, graduating with Highest Honors and a certificate in Computational Science in Engineering. While at the University of Texas, Mr. Ponners authored a thesis on his research in Enhanced Oil Recovery technologies and studied petroleum geology at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He resides in Dallas, Texas where he is a long-distance runner, musician, and DIY enthusiast.

Click here for a list of Chris’ publications.

Chris's posts

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.

Read more

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).

Read more
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.

Read more

Meet the ResFrac team

Learn why both independents and supermajors trust ResFrac

Search