Chris Ponners

Reservoir and Completions User Success Lead

[email protected]

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

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

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.