What's New in Production

SPE’s annual hydraulic fracturing conference and exhibition is always an interesting place to observe the industry’s latest advances in the War on Inefficiency.

This year’s event, recently concluded, was true to form. Parenthetically, the conference also seemed a barometer of industry optimism, with at least one participant heard to comment, “This is a high-energy event.” Not scientific proof of anything, sure, but the anecdotes add up.

Space necessarily limits listing everything noteworthy, but among the various subsets of products and services on offer, one area is of particular interest because of its potential impact.

Fracture mapping. Fracture mapping is a big deal these days. “Fracture maps enable an operator to implement a hydraulic fracturing manufacturing process of designing the completion, executing the stimulation treatment, and evaluating the results,” observes Reveal Energy Services CEO Sudhendu Kashikar. “If the fracture map shows the completion design is not producing the planned fracture dimensions, the operator can change the design to optimize the completion.”

In a recent technical paper, the company offers its view of the current state of the art: “Understanding and mapping hydraulic fracture growth remains a challenge for shales and ultra-tight reservoirs. A number of approaches have been taken to better understand and characterize hydraulic fractures in the subsurface, but a technology which can accurately map hydraulic fractures with minimal operational interference and negligible cost remains elusive. Microseismic-based mapping is arguably the most ubiquitously deployed method, but this approach is costly and provides limited insight into characterizing hydraulic fractures. Alternative technologies for mapping hydraulic fractures are currently being explored, but many of these technologies provide only qualitative information or require expensive data acquisition tools.”

At the conference, the company displayed its answer to this conundrum, a hydraulic fracture and proppant mapping technology that it claims is novel, technically robust, easy to use, and low-cost. The technology is said to be based on basic poromechanic theory, [using] measurements from surface pressure gauges during the stimulation process to determine the geometry, orientation, and spatial location of hydraulic fractures with higher precision than other traditional techniques, while providing insight into the proppant distribution. The company says it has validated more than 2,500 hydraulic fracturing stages throughout the U.S. with its pressure-based fracture maps. Walking further down the aisle, we also encounter… 

Wireless frac/production monitoring system. Back in the day, wireless data transmission in a wellbore meant mud pulse, but time and technology march on. Tubel Energy presented a wireless system for monitoring pressure and temperature inside a wellbore. The gauge can be used to monitor all zones fractured in a well, or multiple gauges can be deployed for monitoring individual frac zones. The system is deployed as part of the frac string and stays in the well permanently. The system collects data before, during and after the frac, and the company says it can provide high-speed flowback data. 

The system stores the acquired data in its memory and transfers the downhole frac pressure and temperature data recorded during the frac job to a wireless receiver deployed in the well using slickline, electric line, or coiled tubing, after the frac is completed. The status of the data transfer is monitored at the surface in real time.

A SCADA system obtains the data from the wireless receiver once the receiver, is returned to the surface. The data are then loaded into a PC for processing. The gauges continue to work in the wellbore collecting production and pressure buildup data for the life of the battery, which is approximately three years.

Disappearing downhole. Dissolvable frac balls have been around for a while now, and the idea has spread, in one case to a dissolvable frac plug from Innovex. Beyond the ability to completely dissolve, out-of-the-ordinary status is assured by the fact that the plug does not use an element or slip system. In place of slips is a “grit-slip” system.

Also involved in what it calls “downhole degradable [sic]” tools is Bubbletight. Spelling aside, of interest here is the company’s patent-pending, thermoplastic plug sealing element, which it says degrades in ambient-temperature fresh water. The material was formulated for tensile, tear, abrasion resistance, and high elongation at high hardness. It has mechanical characteristics similar to NBR but dissolves into a lightly-viscous liquid when in contact with fresh water. The company says the elastomer is the only one on the market that can degrade in low-temperature wells.

Another useful non-metallic material appears to be DiverterPlus, from the eponymous company. The biopolymer material is a temporary diverting material used to divert fracturing treatments within the well. During placement, it is a solid capable of bridging across perforation tunnels and fractures near the wellbore. With time and temperature, in the presence of water, the material hydrolyzes to a clear, non-toxic liquid.

The industry has been knocked for the pace of its technology adoption rate. Not long ago, Forbes magazine remarked on its “…slow pace of technology adoption. The oil and gas industry has historically relied upon rudimentary paper-based technology and really had no need to think outside of the box, because companies were too busy developing resources and making money.”

Well, the pace appears to be picking up, and it’s always fun to guess which new developments will eventually become the tried-and-true. Place your bets.