American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017 - 48

SpecialReport: Oil Field Chemistry

Custom Chemistries Raise Production
By Colter Cookson
From lubricants that optimize longlateral drilling to wax and scale inhibitors
that keep mature wells on line, chemistries
play a vital role in oil field economics.
Their contributions to a field's profitability
continue to grow as chemical providers
and service companies invent new formulas that deliver even better performance
and tackle new problems.
The latest innovations include advanced
completion fluids that improve well productivity, hydrogen sulfide scavengers
that work without generating downtimecausing solids, and fluids for rejuvenating
aging stripper wells and improving waterflood sweep efficiency.
According to John Chisholm, president
and chief executive officer of Flotek Industries Inc., these technological improvements have been facilitated by a change in
how operators buy and deploy chemicals.
"In the past, operators would work
with companies that functioned like a
Home Depot on location by providing
everything the site required," he says.
"Today, many operators are decoupling
services. For example, instead of having
a pumping company buy diesel to fuel
the hydraulic fracturing pumps, they will
work with their own diesel distributor.
"Decoupling diesel, acid, proppant
and chemistry can lead to tremendous
savings. In fact, public companies have

48 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

reported savings in the tens of millions
of dollars," Chisholm relates. "In addition
to its economic benefit, decoupling allows
a much tighter relationship between the
supplier and the operator."
That close relationship allows chemical
companies to customize chemistry solutions for each project, Chisholm says. "It
is no longer enough to take a one-sizefits-all approach," he stresses. "With current
technology and data, we can adjust chemical programs to accommodate changes
in geology from pad to pad and maximize
the operator's return on investment."
James Silas, Flotek's vice president
of research and innovation, concurs. "In
many plays, the formation's rock chemistry, oil composition and produced
water characteristics can change from
one pad to another," he says. "All of
these factors affect and interact with
completion fluids. To increase the chance
a well will provide an economic payback,
we need to understand those variations
and adjust the completion fluid's chemistry to match and accentuate the chemistry in the reservoir."
In many cases, Chisholm says a
skilled, relationship-oriented chemical
company will recommend using fewer
chemicals or lower concentrations. "Our
goal is to prescribe the right chemistry
at the right amount," he emphasizes.
"By working backward from the reservoir
and analyzing each well as if it was our

own, we often can identify ways to improve performance or maintain performance while reducing costs."
Cognitive Computing
To ensure it prescribes the right chemistry, Flotek opened a new global research
and innovation center in Houston last
year, Chisholm notes. With plenty of
meeting space and ways for customers
to interact with researchers, he says the
center is designed to encourage collaboration between clients and employees.
As wells generate more data and researchers discover new ways to use those
data, Chisholm warns it will become increasingly difficult to fully optimize chemical programs. "Recognizing that reality,
we are making investments in cognitive
computing, including an alignment with
IBM," he says. "Like the medical industry,
we believe we can employ computers capable of self-learning and adaptive thinking
to analyze vast datasets and make recommendations that will improve our clients'
returns on investment."
One factor that can impact chemical
performance is water quality, Silas says.
"If the water contains too many dissolved
solids and metals, it can keep polymers
from dissolving and prevent them from
reducing friction as expected," he illustrates.
"Ideally, the completion fluid needs to
match the downhole surface chemistry and
in situ water so it can allow flow to happen



American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017

Contents
American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017 - 1
American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017 - 2
American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017 - 3
American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017 - Contents
American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017 - 5
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