American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2021 - 77

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SpecialReport: Permian Resource Solutions
is typically carried out at an offsite analytical lab, requiring a sample dissolution
and a three-week or longer turnaround
on average.
Liquid-based tracers, likewise, are
limited to only chemical measurement
techniques at a molecular detection level
and are notorious for signaling " false
positive " for various types of frac hits.
To point, chemical tracers tend to percolate
deeper in the often-microscopic natural
fissures within the DFN of a typical
stacked pay unconventional well, often
erroneously alerting the completion team
that all the fractures are communicating
and drawing down production. In reality,
proppant conductivity ensures that once
pumping stops, production will flow only
from the sand-filled fractures; the natural
fissures will instantly seal with minimal
interwell communication.
The often-prohibitive costs and limitations of chemical tracers drove the development of the new ultrahigh-resolution
nanoparticle tracer for flow mapping. Integrated with digitally enabled intelligent
completion diagnostics and multidiscipli-

nary subject matter expertise, the smart
tracer portfolio provides value beyond the
response of pressure gauges and costly
detection technologies in one easily deployed, affordable and verifiable package.
Smart Tracer Technology
A breakthrough in bringing cost-effective nanotechnology to completions,
the smart tracer portfolio is based on
proprietary micron-size particles developed from low-cost and environmentally
friendly materials. Fundamental to the
development program was engineering
fit-for-purpose and distinctly tagged,
nonradioactive tracers that are compatible
with both oil and water, effectively
cutting the cost in half compared with
chemical tracers.
The intelligent tracers are formulated
for specific well characteristics to deliver
subatomic detection accuracy, with exceptional surface recovery rates. Based
on diagnostic field data, the technology
exhibits extraordinary precision in mapping
fieldwide direct frac hits.
Unlike chemical tracers, once deployed,

ARTICLE
REPRINTS

smart tracers are incapable of penetrating
into the opened nano-size fissures and
unpropped fractures, thereby mitigating
false positive signals to accurately characterize direct frac hits. Moreover, rather
than quickly dissolving, the particle-based
fingerprinted tracers tend to endure within
the fracture network, extending the recovery time considerably and enabling
continuous measurement and monitoring
of stage-level production profiles.
Additionally, a specially designed portable
analytical lab facilitates on-site sampling,
extraction and interpretation in near real
time, thereby avoiding the wait for lab test
results. Requiring only a few gallons of
flowback a day for sampling, the field
analysis entails a proprietary process to
separate the particles from the flow sample.
The returned particles are placed in an analytical instrument that quickly produces
the elemental composition and crystallinity
results for subatomic analysis. The distinctive
fingerprints are then detected on each of
the recovered tracers to identify the stagelevel production and direct frac hit data,
and correlate the tracer recovery over an

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American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2021

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