Details for "A New Environmentally Acceptable Technique for Determination of Propped Fracture Height and Width"
For years, radioactive tracers have been used in combination with standard industry logging tools to gain valuable insight about the fracture height (near-wellbore vertical coverage) of proppant-packed fractures. The existing tracer technology has a number of safety and environmental issues that must be addressed when using this technology as part of a fracturing treatment. These issues, along with regulations concerning the transportation of radioactive materials, have impacted the application of this technology in several areas.
This presentation will describe a new patent-pending technology that can generate valuable data on propped fracture height, as well as insight into propped fracture width. In this new technology, a non-radioactive tagging additive is incorporated into the resin coating of the proppant. This non-hazardous, environmentally safe, coated proppant can be transported and applied without any of the restrictions associated with radioactive tracers. Once the proppant is placed in the well, a gamma spectroscopy logging tool is used together with a fast neutron source to activate the tagging additive. The additive then becomes temporarily radioactive, emitting characteristic gamma rays that are visible to the logging tool's spectrometer.
The additive used in this technology has been selected for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its very short halflife after being irradiated. By the time the logging process is complete and the well is ready to be placed in production, the additive will no longer emit a detectable level of radiation. This presentation will describe this technology and its use in some detail. It will also present the results of several recent jobs that utilized this new technology to determine aspects of propped fracture geometry.
The presentation is based upon SPE 109969 which was presented at the SPE ATCE in Anaheim, CA 11-14 November 2007.
Darrell Holmes is Technology Manager for the Oilfield Technology Group of Hexion. Darrell joined Hexion in late 2007. He began his career with Halliburton in 1981. He held several global Engineering, Sales, Operations positions including Director of Global Quality for Halliburton until joining Hexion in October 2007. He has been active in SPE since 1990. Darrell holds a BSAGE from University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR.
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