Fracturing/pressure pumping
Major increases in hydrocarbon production require both incremental and revolutionary technologies, industry leaders said during the SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference.
Technology developers expect the tight-oil industry to give lightweight proppants another look after the Permian Basin’s biggest operator becomes an adopter.
Outstanding papers over the past year have addressed topics such as casing deformation, well spacing, frac-design optimization, proppant transport in the well or in fractures, integrating diagnostics from field trials, and exploring the effects of lateral length on production.
-
In this study, a laboratory analysis was conducted to study the effect of a phosphonate-based scale inhibitor on a mixture of hypersaline Arabian Gulf seawater and formation water under high-temperature/high-pressure conditions. -
This paper presents a factory-model approach to improving CT drillout performance that has been used successfully for more than 3 years and has become standard practice.
-
This paper contains a detailed discussion of methods and a software tool that has been developed to generate information that predicts formation-face pressures in real time with the help of live bottomhole-pressure data.
-
The very first fracturing job used sand scooped from a nearby river. After decades of buying sand based on tight size standards, unconventional operators are increasingly going back to a broad range of sizes, similar to that river sand.
-
In the fast-moving US shale sector, no market trend seems to last long. The pressure pumping market exemplifies the maxim.
-
"I have some patients whose symptoms I can’t explain," physician Ulrike Meyer said, describing nosebleeds, rare cancers, and respiratory illness among a dearth of data.
-
Frac water disinfection experts become De Nora service arm in the unconventional oil and gas market.
-
The complicated parent-child relationship in US shale fields is emerging as a turning point in the US shale revolution. One of the first executives to exploit tight oil says the issue will reverse the sector’s cumulative growth rate by 2025.
-
Encana CEO Doug Suttles assures that shale executives are acutely aware of the parent-child well challenge, and he doesn’t think it’s “a big threat” to the sector.
-
Pictures shot in fractured wells show how a high-pressure slurry of water and sand carves up the perforations.
