Jess Barhaug

Senior Reservoir and Completions Engineer

[email protected]

Jess is a Senior Reservoir and Completions Engineer with ResFrac where she helps clients optimize their developments using ResFrac’s suite of modeling tools.

Jess has been a leader in the diagnostic and modeling space throughout her career and is proud to leverage that experience as part of the ResFrac team. Her experience at small and mid-size operators bring a unique perspective to the team.

Prior to joining ResFrac, Jess was a Completions Engineering Advisor for the Ovintiv Chief Completions Team. Her focus was on optimizing job size and perf design through modeling and integrated diagnostics in the Permian Basin. Before Ovintiv, she was a Senior Reservoir Engineer focusing on field studies and data analytics in the DJ Basin at Great Western Petroleum. Jess led the integrated diagnostic studies, including deploying the first dissolvable fiber in a horizonal well in North America, with results that yielded a 20% production improvement. Previously, she worked for WPX Energy as a Senior Completions Engineer in the Williston Basin, where, in addition to operational design and execution, Jess was one of the lead engineers for a completion and spacing optimization program. As a Completion and Production Engineer at Schlumberger, she worked a variety of technical projects, including the design, execution and evaluation of hydraulic fracturing treatments, rate transient analysis, production history matching and microseismic monitoring and evaluation across the Rockies basins.

She received her M.S. in Petroleum Engineering, with her thesis work focused on using a reservoir simulator to model compressed air energy storage, and B.S in Environmental Engineering, both from the Colorado School of Mines. She also was a member of the women’s basketball team while receiving her bachelor’s degree.

Residing in CO, in her free time, Jess enjoys going on adventures with her husband, kids, and Goldendoodle. These normally entail snowboarding for Jess (skiing for the rest of the family…minus the dog), camping, hiking, fly fishing, mountain biking and seeking out the best food in our destinations.

Publications

Barhaug, J., Hughes, D., Ramos, C., Klein, C., Lawrence, M., Mazza, J., Havens, J., 2024. Tying Stage Architecture to Wolfcamp Performance. SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition. The Woodlands, Texas, USA, SPE-217773-MS
Hughes, D., Barhaug, J., Lilly, T., 2024. PERFectly Stressed Out: Surface and Downhole Imaging Relations. SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition. The Woodlands, Texas, USA, SPE-217769-MS
Barhaug, J. Bussey, J. Schaffer, B. Shemeta, J., Lawrence, M., Tran, J., Stark, P., 2022. Testing XLE For Cost Savings in the DJ Basin: A Fiber Optic Case Study. SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition. The Woodlands, Texas, USA, SPE-209155-MS
Witt, D., Barhaug, J., Propper, M., Jiang, W., Jia, J., Hawkes, R., 2022. Perforation Cluster Efficiency of Cemented Plug and Perf Limited Entry Completions. Insights from Logging Based Diagnostics. SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition. The Woodlands, Texas, USA, SPE-209130-MS
Moussa, T., Barhaug, J., Witt, D., Hawkes, R., Dehghanpour, H., 2022. Linking Flowback Recovery to Completion Efficiency: Niobrara-DJ Basin Case Study. SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition. The Woodlands, Texas, USA, SPE-209136-MS
Brand, J., Barhaug, J., Reinmiller, R., Parker, R., Cherian, B., 2021. Multi-Disciplinary Fracture and Spacing Study in the DJ Basin. Unconventional Resources Technology Conference. Houston, Texas, USA, URTeC: 5297
Hu, K., Schmidt, A., Barhaug, J., Wong, J., Tian, J., Hall, B., 2015. Sand, Resin-Coated Sand or Ceramic Proppant? The Effect of Different Proppants on the Long-Term Production of Bakken Shale Wells. SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. Houston, Texas, USA, SPE-174816-MS
Barhaug, J., King, V. Schmidt, A., Southcott, A., Steinke, L., Harper, H., 2014. Completion Optimization and Validation in the Williston Basin Through Integrated Datasets. SPE Annual Technical Conference. SPE-170721-MS.
Barhaug, J., Harper, H., Southcott, A. 2014. Creating, Calibrating and Testing a Hydraulic Fracture Model for Optimized Williston Basin Completions. Unconventional Resources Technology Conference. URTeC 1918604.
Cherian, B., Claugus, A.,Dilli, M., Mata, D., Sitchler, J., Alatrach, S., Neumiller, J., Panjaitan, M. 2010. An Integrated Single-Well Approach to Evaluating Completion Effectiveness and Reservoir Properties in the Wind Dancer Field. Tight Gas Completions Conference. SPE-137126-MS.
Internal – Selected to participate at technical Reservoir Symposium in Bucharest, Romania for integrated microseismic project, Orchard Field, CO
Neumiller, J., Graves, R., and Fanchi, J. 2009. Feasibility of Using Wind Energy and CAES Systems in a Variety of Geologic Systems. EUROPEC/EAGE Conference and Exhibition. SPE-121934-MS.

Jess'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.