Proppant rock impairment during hydraulic fracturing

Conference · Wed Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1986

OSTI ID:7159679

Roodhart, L; Kuiper, T O; Davies, D R

Equipment has been constructed to give a realistic laboratory simulation of the in-situ conditions during and after a hydraulic fracturing treatment of tight gas reservoirs. The equipment measures the permeability of both the 'natural' core material and the proppant pack with gas under in-situ conditions before and after exposure to fracturing fluid. The rate of clean-up of the proppant pack and the core sample is measured after the fracturing fluid has broken. Various fracturing fluids commercially available from the major service companies have been evaluated. Little damage to the proppant/rock interface has been measured but massive damage to the proppant pack was observed. The damage is caused by frac fluid residue, filter cake and non-Darcy flow effects. This damage is observed only in the experiments described above and has not been reported in other, less sophisticated laboratory simulations of the fracturing process. The least damaging of the commercially available products tested has been identified. procedures have been developed for placing ''over-designed'' (or increased conductivity) proppant packs during field hydraulic fracturing treatments. This has resulted in large increases in well productivity during field treatment, and is particularly marked during the early (transient) production phase. It is concluded that there is scope for the development of less damaging fracturing fluids in order to optimise the economics.

• Research Organization: Koninklijke/Shell EandP Laboratorium
• OSTI ID: 7159679
• Report Number(s): CONF-861080-
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
020300* -- Petroleum-- Drilling & Production
BENCH-SCALE EXPERIMENTS
COMMINUTION
DARCY LAW
ENERGY SOURCES
ENHANCED RECOVERY
FLOW RATE
FLUIDS
FORMATION DAMAGE
FOSSIL FUELS
FRACTURING
FRACTURING FLUIDS
FUELS
HYDRAULIC FRACTURING
OIL WELLS
PERMEABILITY
PETROLEUM
PRODUCTION
PROPPING AGENTS
RECOVERY
RESERVOIR ROCK
ROCK-FLUID INTERACTIONS
SIMULATION
STIMULATION
WELL STIMULATION
WELLS