Mark McClure

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

[email protected]

Mark McClure established ResFrac in 2015 to help operators maximize value through the application of advanced geomechanics and reservoir simulation.

Before founding ResFrac, Mark was an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering. After earning a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering and a Master of Science in petroleum engineering from Stanford University, Mark earned a PhD in energy resources engineering at Stanford.

Mark has earned multiple awards, including the Hank Ramey Award from Stanford University, Best Paper in Geophysics, an outstanding paper award at URTeC, Hart Energy 40 Under 40, SPE Regional Awards for Completions Optimization and for Young Member Service, and SPE’s TWA Energy Influencers award. On four occasions, he has received recognition from journals as an outstanding reviewer.

In his free time, Mark enjoys hiking, playing with his dog, watching sports, and traveling.

Click here for a list of Mark’s publications.

Mark'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.