American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2019 - 25

Fracturing Conference
Tackles History And Future Of
Key Industry Technique
Last month, I kicked off the 2019 conference season by attending the 2019 Society of Petroleum Engineers Hydraulic
Fracturing Technology Conference in The Woodlands, Tx. This
growing event has become the preeminent hydraulic fracturing
event in the United States and is likely the most important conference for folks in the completions world, if not the entire upstream industry.
Not surprisingly, tight rocks tend to take the day at this
event, making participation a must for operators and service
companies working in the lower-48. According to event chairman
Martin Rylance from BP, the 2019 event had record attendance.
Many popular papers and technologies considered the evolution
of fracturing technology, diverters and frac-hits.
One of the highlights included a paper titled, "Trends in the
North American Frac Industry: Invention through the Shale Revolution (SPE-194345.MS)," written by Leen Weijers, Chris Wright
and Mike Mayerhofer of Liberty Oilfield Services; as well as
Mark Pearson, Larry Griffin and Paul Weddle of Liberty Resources.
The paper highlights the roots of hydraulic fracturing, from the
first frac conducted in Hugoton, Ks., in 1947 with commercial
operations beginning in 1949.
About 20 years later in the 1970's, the industry made a leap
forward and began to apply the technology in tight sands.
However, largely from that first job until the early 1990s, the
public knew almost nothing about fracturing. You can make the
case that it still doesn't, but it wasn't until companies began
fracturing source rock that news broke about what people at the
time called a new "drilling technique" (if you can believe that).
Despite the bad press, fracturing technology development moved
forward, and this paper's authors assert that the industry's innovation and efficiency has made another step change in reducing
service delivery cost, setting the course for sustained economic
development of unconventional resources at progressively lower
break-even production costs.
Additionally, while service costs continue to drop, oil and
gas operations' environmental footprint continues to shrink as
well, thanks to faster construction, fewer pad locations, quieter
fleets and more environmentally benign frac chemistry. In short,
we are getting better at what we do, but there is a lot of room
for improvement as we continue to refine and streamline the
fracturing process.
In another paper, "Got Diversion? Real Time Analysis to
Identify Success or Failure (SPE-194336-MS)," authors Michael
Trumble, Matthew Sinkey and Jeremy Meehleib of Calfrac
Well Services highlight sustained diversion for subsequent
proppant placement to create frac optimization while pumping.
This paper asserts that traditionally successful diversion is
identified as a sudden pressure increase when the diverter
material reaches the perforations.
However, fiber optic data prompt the authors to suggest that,
with sustained diversion, treatments can be optimized while
pumping the treatment. According to the paper, overlaying
treating pressures before and after diversion enables better

"Additionally, while service costs continue
to drop, oil and gas operations'
environmental footprint continues to shrink
as well, thanks to faster construction, fewer
pad locations, quieter fleets and more
environmentally benign frac chemistry.

judgments about the diverter's effectiveness and allows for
smart adjustments on subsequent drops.
The method consists of plotting early time treatment data on
top of later treatment data to obtain an analysis that is more
thorough than the traditional method of simply evaluating the
pressure increase or "hit" pressure. The paper goes on to say
that this practice is especially useful to operators who use
diverting agents to stimulate more efficiently in each stage.
Finally, in a paper titled, "Utilization of Far Field Diverters to
Mitigate Parent and Infill Well Fracture Interaction in Shale Formations (SPE-194329-MS)," Junjing Zhang, David D. Cramer,
Jamie McEwen and Matt White of ConocoPhillips, as well as
Kevin Bjornen, discuss how to reduce frac-hits using far field diverting agents. Hydraulic fracturing treatments in shale infill
wells often are impacted by parent well depletions and asymmetrical
fracture growth. This can cause all sorts of problems, chief
among which include excessive load water production, deposition
of proppant and deformation of the casing in the parent well.
This paper examines two types of far field diverter systems-
dissolvable, extremely fine particulate mixed with 100 mesh
sand and mixtures of 325 mesh silica flour and 100 mesh sand-
that were field tested in a shale play. According to their analysis,
the authors saw no reduction in the magnitude of pressure
buildups during fracture hits, however they did see a rate
increase in parent wells' post-hit pressure falloff. Overall, the
paper identifies far field diverters as a proven approach to
protect parent wells from frac hits, which can improve infill
well stimulation efficiency.
Overall, the 2019 SPE-HFTC was a great start to my conference
year. I enjoyed the comradery of old friends and colleagues at an
event that shows once again how the oil and gas industry comes
together to share knowledge, challenge the status quo and find
more efficient and affordable ways to improve production, reduce
uncertainty and improve everyone's bottom lines.
❒

JEREMY VISCOMI is a strategic

marketing expert for the oil and
gas industry. Among his many
roles, he serves as the MidContinent regional lead for the
Petroleum Technology Transfer
Council, providing independent
operators with access to emerging technology aimed at reducing
risk and growing profits.
MARCH 2019 25

American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2019

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