The authors examine methods of adopting an aggressive approach to optimizing stimulation design to lower the break-even level of operations and evaluate the results. Operators achieved significant improvements in production by changing parameters in the fracturing and completion design strategy, including, but not limited to, the amount of water used, the amount of sand pumped, stage spacing, maximum sand concentration, and fracturing-fluid selection. The complete paper addresses the importance of aggressive design, its evolution, and its enabling technologies.
Trends in Development of Unconventional Resources
Although completion practices and production numbers vary from basin to basin and from play to play, certain high-level trends remain in the development of unconventional reservoirs over the past few years. In most places, operators have been drilling increasingly longer laterals.
