Bob Barba

Best Practices for New Well Fracs and Legacy Well Refracs

14:13 Hours
IES started teaching a refrac course in 2008 following the natural gas price dip that year, focusing primarily on conventional tight gas reservoirs. Motivation was the result of working on dozens of integrated reservoir characterization projects that showed huge volumes of stranded reserves. When the petrophysical analyses were integrated with geology and reservoir engineering it was observed in virtually every field study that there were significant volumes of stranded oil and gas. When the completion information was introduced, it appeared that completion engineers assumed that fracs were “reserve seeking missiles” and would find the pay. More often than not the fracs found the depleted areas of the reservoir. The result was numerous gas fields with +/- 10% recovery factors (vs 65% to 75%) and oil reservoirs with single digit recoveries vs 14% to 15%. IES published the first of many refac papers in 2009 (SPE 125008), the emphasis was on evaluating the original hydrocarbons in place and determining if there were remaining reserves that could be economically recovered. It focused on wells that did not use “best practices” in the original completion using the findings from SPE 90483 (Barba and Shook 2004). The paper recommended using expandable liners for mechanical isolation in all cases and recommended against bullheads. The industry eventually recognized that was the optimum refrac strategy at a (much) later date nine years later!

01-00a Introduction (21 min.) 
01-00b – Course Overview (14 min.)
01-01 – Top 10 Reasons To Refrac (9 min.)
01-02 – Top 10 Reasons To Refrac (part 2) (19 min.)
01-03 – Top 10 Reasons To Refrac (Part 3) (19 min.)

02-01 – Determining who is doing refracs and where they are refraccing (10 min.)
02-02 – Organic Shale Refrac Identification (8 min.)
02-03 to 02-06 – Overall Refrac Market Penetration (17 min.)
02-07 – Refrac Pad Economics (10 min.)
02-08 – Can Refracs Save the World? Expected Daily Production Increase from Refracs (21 min.)
02-09 – Refrac EUR From Cluster Spacing (7 min.)

03-01 – Organic Shale Drainage (23 min.)
03-02 – Role of Well Spacing (13 min.)

04-01 – Conventional Matrix Reservoir Horizontal Well Issues (12 min.)
04-02 – Refrac Candidate Selection in Matrix Reservoirs (29 min.)
04-03 – Why Do Multiple Zone Completions Leave Gas Behind? (20 min.)
04-04 – Gas Well Damage from Inter-Stage Flowback and Killing (5 min.)

05-01 – Four Methods Available For Estimating The Recoverable Oil And Gas From Refracs (22 min.)
05-02 – Selection Process Methods 1 to 4 (19 min.)
05-03 – Discussion Of The Merits And Limitations Of Each Technique (16 min.)
05-04- Recovery Factor Concept Background (13 min.)
05-05 – Recovery Factor Calculation (6 min.)
05-06 – Recovery Factor Drainage Height Assumptions (16 min.)
05-07 – Flow Barriers Vs Frac Barriers (17 min.)
05-08 – Unpropped Height Issues (24 min.)
05-09 – EUR Estimation (15 min.)
05-10 – OIP To Decline Curve Conversion (25 min.)

06-01 – Role Of Permeability In Refrac Candidate Evaluation (15 min.)
06-02 – Permeability From Production History Matching (11 min.)

07-01 – Wellbore Integrity Issue Discussion (19 min.)

08-01 – Mechanical Isolation vs. Bullhead Diverter Isolation (16 min.)
08-02 – Mechanical Isolation Options (8 min.)
08-03 – Diverter Options In Horizontal Wells (19 min.)
08-04 – Hybrid Liner And Diverter System Discussion (19 min.)

09-01a – Extreme Limited Entry (Part 1) (13 min.)
09-01b – Extreme Limited Entry (Part 2) (16 min.)
09-02 – Evaluating The Effectiveness Of XLE (14 min.)
09-03 – Delta-P vs. Perforation Diameter And Rate (17 min.)
09-04a – Comprehensive Cluster Efficiency Study With 4500 Step Down Tests (Part 1) (17 min.)
09-04b – Comprehensive Cluster Efficiency Study With 4500 Step Down Tests (Part 2) (17 min.)
09-05 & 09-06 – Treatment Rate Per Stage Vs Number Of Perforations Per Cluster (17 min.)
09-07 – Perforation Charge Issues (10 min.)
09-08 & 09-09 – Dual String Entry Hole Issues (10 min.)
09-10 & 09-11 – Cluster Efficiency Estimation Overview (7 min.)
09-12 – Step Down Test Analysis (8 min.)
09-13 to 09-16 – Radioactive Tracers/Neutron Logs/Fiber Optics/XLE Implementation (9 min.)
09-17 – Friction Pressure Drop Calculation (9 min.)
09-18 – XLE And Expandable Liners (14 min.)
09-19 to 09-22 – Cluster Spacing, Refrac Orientation and Near Wellbore Friction (18 min.)
09-23 to 09-26 – XLE And FDI’s / Refrac Orientation / 7.4% Rf’s / Reorientation Proofs (18 min.)

10-01 to 10-03 – Parent Well Pressure Sinks And Asymmetric Fractures (16 min.)
10-04 to 10-07 – Level Of Depletion Needed For Asymmetric Fracture Generation (15 min.)
10-08 to 10-10 – Haynesville New Well Recovery Factor Comparison With Protective Refracs (8 min.)

11-01 to 11-06 – Recompletions Vs Refracs (15 min.)

12-01 to 12-06 – Case Studies & Field Examples (22 min.)

Access All Saga Wisdom Training Content

Already a member? Sign in.