High-Efficiency Proppant Placement Technology and Its Application

Abstract

Aiming at solving the problem of sand production and limited sand carrying distance during slick water fracturing of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs, an efficient proppant placement technology based on fiber structure stabilizer is innovatively developed: During the sand fracturing construction of oil and gas wells, the fiber and fiber structure stabilizer is pumped into the reservoir with proppant in sand-adding stage, and the components including fiber, stabilizer, proppant and drag reducing agent form a stable net-like structure to improve the proppant placement distance and stacking height, thus increasing the effective support volume. With this technology, the seepage mode of artificial fracture is changed and its conductivity of supporting fracture body is greatly improved; the critical flow rate of proppant flowback is increased up to tens of folds compared in the same operation condition. It has been applied in more than 30 wells of tight gas and shale oil and gas in China. The sand production rate after fracturing in tight gas was 79% lower than conventional fracturing without additives of fiber and fiber structure stabilizer. The effect of proppant flowback control and hydrocarbon stimulation is remarkable.