American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2017 - 75

SpecialReport: Service and Supply Startups
environmental standards for a variety of
products, including water treatment chemicals and food-grade lubricants. Kurtz
points out that a green certification from
NSF would eliminate the need to report
chemical spills.
The friction-reducing monomer also
penetrates far into the formation, Kurtz
says, citing two mechanisms. First, with
a size measured at the femto scale, it is
even smaller than nanotechnology and
therefore capable of moving through tiny
pore spaces.
"In addition, the monomer moves on
its own by affecting an ion exchange,"
Kurtz says. "When it encounters hydrocarbons, its negative charge causes it to
penetrate them and eject any water they
contain. In effect, the monomer swaps
places with oil, dislodging the oil while
moving into the formation faster and farther than the water that carries it."
In one field test, a mixture containing
the monomer went at least 86 feet into
the formation, he says. In another test,
the monomer was injected into a steam
injection well that had been unused for
three months, then chased with freshwater.
In only two days, Kurtz says the operator
noticed higher water pHs in production
wells 13 acres away, a testament to the
monomer's mobility.
The same test showed how much the
monomer's ability to dislodge oil and
leave behind an oil-repelling coating
boosts production, Kurtz comments.
"Within 24 hours, oil production from
the production wells tripled or quadrupled,"
he details.
In 15 Austin Chalk wells, monomerenhanced chemistries increased production
by as much as 225 percent, Kurtz continues. He reiterates that the coating the
monomer leaves behind protects against
scale, corrosion, and paraffin.
Kurtz says the monomer can be applied
when performing near wellbore cleanups
or stimulating old wells. "It can also be
used as part of water, steam or carbon
dioxide floods, as well as in completions
on new wells," he reports.
"If we can get this technology into
the corrosion and scale inhibitors used in
completions, every bit of slickwater will
become a carrying agent for it. It may be
able to increase recovery from the fracture
network from 35 percent to 75-85 percent,"
he estimates. "At the same time, it will
simplify chemical deployment by reducing
the need for other corrosion and scale inhibitors."

With Tracts.co's ﬂagship software, landmen no longer need to worry about building ﬂowcharts, creating reports and performing complex calculations. Instead, they can focus
on interpreting and entering individual instruments. Tracts says this cuts project times
in half while preventing potentially costly title defects.

Lease-Speeding Software
Tracts.co aims to use automation to
cut in half the time landmen and title attorneys spend on projects, says Ashley
Gilmore, the company's co-founder and
CEO.
"Normally, landmen gather instruments
and take notes to create run sheets, ownership reports and flowcharts," Gilmore
describes. "With our cloud-based software,
Tracts, they only need to enter the instruments. The software automatically builds
the run sheets, ownership reports and
flowcharts.
"In the Permian Basin, we have a
client who says this automation has cut
two or three weeks off every six-week
project," Gilmore reports. "In Oklahoma,
we had a $10 billion client do a direct
comparison between Tracts and two control sections using traditional methods.
Tracts took four days, compared with 18
and 19 days."
By allowing landmen to focus on interpreting and entering one document at
a time, the software also improves accuracy
and validity, Gilmore adds. "In the past,
each landman would have to determine
whether hundreds of other instruments
relate to the one they are looking at, understand those relationships, and remember
several tiny percentages in order to perform
complex calculations," he says.
To convey how complex those calculations can be, Gilmore mentions that
Tracts has to consider 12-18 dimensions
to build its flowcharts. These include the
time, the parties, who has surface and

mineral interest, and what type of interest
each person has. Gilmore points out that
mineral interests alone are divided into
five rights: executive, bonus, delay, ingress,
and royalty.
With so many details to keep track of
and calculations to perform, it is easy for
landmen and title attorneys to make mistakes, Gilmore warns. He references a
University of Utah study that analyzed
the results of title cleanups after acquisitions. It found that title defects resulted
in a net acreage loss around 19.9 percent.
In other words, almost one in five acres
were affected by title defects.
Gilmore says Tracts can address subtle
mistakes that lead to such defects. "With
certain interests, it is impossible to tell
whether they have an impact until all the
title has been run, including the lease
being taken, so the landman has to backtrack through each title to determine if
there has been any overconveyance," he
says. "Tracts does those calculations, so
it will flag the overconveyance immediately."
The software also can spot more mundane mistakes, such as duplicate grantors,
Gilmore says. Because it builds and displays the flowchart as instruments are
entered, it can also help landmen and
title attorneys notice potential issues. For
example, if an unusually lengthy period
of time has passed between instruments,
the landman may see the gap and realize
an instrument is missing.
Gilmore says Tracts' interface is simple
enough that even less technically-inclined
NOVEMBER 2017 75

http://www.Tracts.co

American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2017

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