Argentina

Vaca Muerta production is on the upswing. Will increasing activity propel the Argentine play to the ranks of US shale? Data suggest it is both already there and has a ways to go.

Wells are starting to come on stronger than expected, which is putting a new emphasis on orginizing all the other ingredients needed for shale production: more rigs, roads, pipelines, water, and sand.

Experimentation reveals that swellable nanogels increase their size faster than expected or produce aggregation leading to serious blocking problems at the sandface. This paper studies if the addition of a surfactant can help improve injectivity.

YPF has followed an unconventional path up the learning curve to develop the Vaca Muerta, which could be the first big ultratight play developed outside North America.

Añelo is a small town in an arid, sparsely populated area with a new supermarket, police station, bank, skate park, hotel, and hospital. In the past decade the population has roughly tripled to 7,000, and in 5 years, it is expected to nearly triple again to 20,000.

After Gustavo Astie, executive manager for ­unconventionals at YPF, presented what he thought was an aggressive growth plan for the coming year to YPF management, he was asked: Would it be possible to go faster?

A drive down a gravel road in the Loma Campana follows the steep early learning curve in the Vaca Muerta.

It is easy to fixate on what it will take to extract huge volumes of oil and gas from the nearly impermeable rock within the Vaca Muerta.

As part of a comprehensive water-management strategy, this paper describes different process and operational considerations that are the result of 109 years of production in Argentina’s oldest basin.

The boom in organic shale plays has revealed the critical need to size hydraulic-facture treatments correctly to achieve commercial success.