American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2016 - 73

SpecialReport: Hydraulic Fracturing Technology
initiation, while 0 percent would mean
no fracture initiation in that stage.
Well L resulted in 64 near-wellbore
fractures being initiated, compared to 51
initiation points for Well K in spite of
having denser spacing and an almost
similar number of perforation clusters
for the same lateral length. Although
eight fewer stages were completed in
Well L, it effectively had 650 feet of
more treated lateral compared to Well K
by using intrastage diversion to obtain
uniform distribution within each stage
and across the entire lateral.
Furthermore, DTS data were analyzed
to see if any differences in perforation
cluster efficiency existed when treating
chalks versus marly layers within the
wellbore. This information also could
prove useful in analyzing stress-shadowing
effects from one stage to the next.
It is clear that intrastage diversion in
Well L helped increase initiation points
in both chalks and marly layers. It also is
evident that the marly layers have a lower
percentage of initiation points than chalks
in both wells, but the percentage was
higher in the intrastage diversion Well L.
The information obtained from DTS
during flowback could not be correlated
with shut-in data because gas flow rates
were not measured accurately during that
period. Therefore, quantitative and
meaningful comparisons could not be
made between shut-in and flowback DTS
data.
As a result, flowmeter measurement
of all hydrocarbon phases during flowback
diagnostics has been implemented as a
must in all fiber optics projects. Based
on the information obtained from similar
projects, at any point in time, only 35-40
pecent of perforation clusters identified
as initiation points during initial shut in
were contributing production. During
flow testing, DAS data also provided
information regarding the contributions

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of each perforation cluster.
There was little difference in the first
six months of normalized oil production
results between the 20-stage Well L with
intrastage diversion and the 28-stage Well
K. According to the fiber optics
diagnostics, Well L achieved 20 percent
more fracture initiation in the perforation
clusters. DTS diagnostics showed that
10 of Well K's 28 stages only had 33
percent cluster initiation efficiency, while
none of Well L's 20 stages had less than
50 percent cluster efficiency.
Fiber optics diagnostics successfully
KUMAR RAMURTHY is Halliburton's
technology manager for the Rockies, West
Coast and Alaska. He has 17 years of
conventional and unconventional reservoir
and stimulation engineering experience
with Halliburton. Ramurthy has served
on several Society of Petroleum Engineers
technical committees and also is a technical editor for SPE's "Production &
Operations" and "Reservoir Engineering"
journals. He holds a bachelor's in mechanical engineering from Annamalai
University in India, an M.S. in petroleum
engineering from Mississippi State University and a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from the University of Wyoming.
MARK BROWN is operations manager at Bayswater Exploration & Production LLC in Denver. He joined the
company in 2012 after serving for 27
years as president of Markus Production
Inc. Prior to that, Brown has been an
executive vice president at IR Energy
Financing and a staff engineer at Amoco
Production Company. He holds a B.S.
in mechanical engineering from South
Dakota School of Mines & Technology.
JOE RICHARDSON is senior operations engineer at Bayswater Exploration
& Production LLC in Denver. Prior to
joining Bayswater, he had served as a
senior production engineer at Forest
Oil Corp., a senior production engineer
at Noble Energy, and an asset manager
at Chesapeake Energy. Richardson began
his career as a technical professional at
Halliburton. He is a graduate of Montana
Tech of the University of Montana.
NEHA SAHDEV is a principal project
manager at Pinnacle, a Halliburton Service, in Denver. Her responsibilities include
designing, executing and delivering fiber

validated the effectiveness of intrastage
diversion in the Niobrara study well. The
intrastage diversion process allowed Well
L to achieve $85,000 in cost savings (not
including wireline costs) by optimizing
stage spacing without compromising production performance. Accumulating
similar savings in 10 wells would equate
to paying for an entire well frac job.
With a similar drilling approach and
further optimization in intrastage diversion,
such as increasing the cycles to match
the perforation cluster, production can
be further improved.
❒
optics projects for reservoir monitoring
and optimization. Sahdev joined the company after serving at Schlumberger, including in the positions of completions
sales manager in Oman, field services
manager in India, and project engineer
in Canada, where she was involved in
running deepwater intelligent completions.
She holds a bachelor's in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of
Technology Madras.
JACK WIENER is chief technical adviser for Halliburton in Denver. He
began his career with 21 years of service
at Texaco working in development geology, frontier exploration, asset management, geophysical technology development and global earth modeling.
He also served at Samson Resources
as a senior geologist and Laramie
Energy II in new business development.
Wiener holds several patents in neural
network applications in petrophysics
and geophysics, and invented a neural
network technique for simulating openhole triple combo logs from cased-hole
pulsed neutron data (CHI modeling).
He has a B.S. in geology and an M.S.
in geophysics from the University of
Florida.
MARIANO GARCIA is technical adviser for Halliburton in Denver, where
he is responsible for petrophysical and
geomechanical analysis in the Rockies
region. He previously was with Halliburton
Argentina in Buenos Aires, as part of a
local technical team supporting local exploration of tight and unconventional
projects. Garcia has 12 years of industry
experience, and began his career as a
hydraulic fracturing field engineer. He
holds a degree in industrial engineering
from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.
AUGUST 2016 73

American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2016