Comparison of Fracture Valves vs. Plug-and-Perforation Completion in the Oil Segment of the Eagle Ford Shale: A Case Study

Stegent, Neil; Ferguson, Kip; Spencer, J.D.

doi:10.2118/148642-pa

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

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“…A typical frac valve treatment required less than two days to complete, compared with 5 or more days with the plug-and-perf technique. Case studies on the application of frac valve sliding-sleeve completions in the Eagle Ford, such as Stegent et al (2013), which applied microseismic mapping and oil-based tracers for stimulation and production evaluation, were a factor this operator considered in selecting a frac valve completion system for their initial exploration wells.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing Hydraulic Fracture Performance in the Liquids-Rich Eagle Ford Shale - How Much Proppant Is Enough?

Al-Tailji

Smith²,

Shelley

2014

SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition

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Multi-stage hydraulic fracturing has been implemented in conjunction with horizontal drilling in order to make unconventional, low-permeability reservoirs economically viable. Earlier studies from the development of the Barnett Shale have suggested that high fluid volumes and low proppant concentrations were necessary to generate sufficient stimulated reservoir volume (SRV). However, other shale plays, including the Eagle Ford, have formation material with higher ductility and exist in an anisotropic stress environment that tend to generate planar fractures, where lower fluid volumes and higher proppant concentrations are more appropriate.One operator began exploring their Eagle Ford acreage by utilizing sliding sleeve systems in cemented casing, while trying to determine the best depth within the Eagle Ford sequence to target. Once the drilling target was decided upon, the operator transitioned to a plug-and-perf type of completion in cemented casing in order to improve formation contact and recovery. This provided an opportunity to evaluate different completion designs with enough variability in the data to evaluate fracture performance. This paper will explain the process used to evaluate drilling, completion, and production information in order to discover the parameters that have the highest influence on well productivity. Completion parameters were evaluated against production performance in a variety of ways, including bivariate, multivariate statistical analysis, and neural network modeling. One parameter that was discovered to have high impact was the amount of proppant used per effective cluster, and the data indicated that more proppant was required than what prior experiences in shale stimulations suggested. Changes to the completion and stimulation design were made based on this analysis, resulting in improved production results.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing Hydraulic Fracture Performance in the Liquids-Rich Eagle Ford Shale - How Much Proppant Is Enough?

Al-Tailji

Smith²,

Shelley

2014

SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition

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Single-Size-Ball Interventionless Multi-Stage Stimulation System Improves Stimulated Reservoir Volume and Eliminates Milling Requirements: Case Studies

2014

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In the last decade, there has been a tremendous growth in multi-stage fracturing for unconventional plays employing stimulation sleeves with open hole (OH) packers or cementing. Standard ball-activated frac sleeve systems with graduated ball seats have primarily been used because they can significantly save completion time and cost by facilitating the performance of multiple stimulations in a single continuous process compared with the conventional Plug and Perforate (P-n-P). However, traditional ball-activated frac sleeves have limitations in the number of stages that can be handled, the pressure drop and friction loss each one creates and the need to mill through the ball seats after stimulation. As the number of frac stages increases, the ball seat sizes become dramatically smaller leading to large increases in the surface treating pressure and hydraulic horse power (HHP) needed to generate a given net downhole pressure or injection rate. To solve these limitations a revolutionary ball-activated fracturing system has been designed. This system behaves in similar fashion of activation to the traditional graduated ball seat frac sleeve in that the ball locks into place on the seat, but all the ball seats are the same size and retract, allowing the first ball to pass through all sleeves until it reaches the lowermost one. Similarly the next ball, which is the same size, lands on the next seat up and so on, allowing a virtually unlimited number of zones to be treated for either OH or cemented application. With this new system, there is no milling operation involved and the completion string maintains full drift inside diameter (ID) ready for production after stimulation operations have been completed. In this paper the authors will describe in detail the operational mechanism of this new frac sleeve and present case studies of its use which illustrates the effect of this new technology in optimizing fracturing operations both in horsepower requirements and overall completion time and cost.

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A Novel Double-Group Cross-Linking Hydrogel With High Thixotropy for Water Control in the Horizontal Wells

Chen¹,

Chen²,

Zhu³

et al. 2020

SPE Europec

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Comparison of Fracture Valves vs. Plug-and-Perforation Completion in the Oil Segment of the Eagle Ford Shale: A Case Study

Cited by 3 publications

References 5 publications

Optimizing Hydraulic Fracture Performance in the Liquids-Rich Eagle Ford Shale - How Much Proppant Is Enough?

Optimizing Hydraulic Fracture Performance in the Liquids-Rich Eagle Ford Shale - How Much Proppant Is Enough?

Single-Size-Ball Interventionless Multi-Stage Stimulation System Improves Stimulated Reservoir Volume and Eliminates Milling Requirements: Case Studies

A Novel Double-Group Cross-Linking Hydrogel With High Thixotropy for Water Control in the Horizontal Wells

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