Michael Nole

Senior Reservoir Simulation Engineer

[email protected]

Michael Nole is a Senior Reservoir Simulation Engineer at ResFrac.

Prior to joining ResFrac, Michael was a staff scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he developed reservoir simulation software to study coupled multiphase flow and reactive transport processes in the subsurface. Here he worked on developing capabilities to model carbon storage and mineralization, critical mineral recovery, and geothermal energy.

Prior to this, he was a staff scientist at Sandia National Laboratories developing simulation software to model fluid flow and reactive transport processes associated with deep geologic disposal of radioactive waste, led a formal QA of software for use as a safety assessment code for an operating geologic repository, and developed software capabilities for modeling methane accumulation in marine and Arctic permafrost environments.

Michael obtained a B.S. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.S. and Ph.D in Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

In his free time, Michael loves to bike, swim, hike, ski, and tolerates running so that he can train to race triathlons.

Michael'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.