Searching for the root cause of shale well rate variance: Highly variable fracture treatment response

Date

2022-03-01

Author

TUĞAN, MURAT FATİH
Weijermars, Ruud

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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This case study highlights that shale wells drilled with tight well spacing in the same landing zone using the same fracture treatment plan, commonly show large variance in well productivity. Searching for the root cause(s) of this variance in performance, we conclude that the factory model - which assumes wells can be engineered in reproducible and identical ways - is not yet feasible in practice. For each well, largely similar fracture treatment schedules result in different fracture half lengths. Also, a significant proportion of perforations may fail to create any hydraulic fractures at all. This new reality means that underperforming wells in otherwise promising acreage are more likely an indication of varying fracture treatment response, rather than a result of poor source rock. Research focusing on the reduction of fracture treatment variance therefore deserves priority and may help steady the performance of future wells.

Subject Keywords

Well rate variance, Root causes, Fracture treatment quality, Wolfcamp formation, Permian basin

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/95404

Journal

JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2021.109919

Collections

Department of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Article

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Citation Formats

M. F. TUĞAN and R. Weijermars, “Searching for the root cause of shale well rate variance: Highly variable fracture treatment response,” JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, vol. 210, pp. 0–0, 2022, Accessed: 00, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/95404.