Reservoir Completion 111

low vertical permeability reservoirs. It may often be desirable to fracture through

shale barriers to access multilayer reservoirs. Clearly, a conductive (propped) path
is required through these non-net pay intervals. In a vertical fractured well,
where the dominant flow direction is horizontal, such considerations are rare.
2. Conversely generating vertical fracture growth is harder especially in laminated
reservoirs. Breakdown pressures may also be higher.
3. In a horizontal well, the formations above and below the wellbore are unknown.
The assumption is that they are the same as intersected in a pilot well, adjacent
well or the inclined section of the wellbore. This assumption is error prone and
to some extent, one is ‘fracturing into the unknown’ – especially underneath the
wellbore. Dipping formations or sinusoidal trajectories can be helpful for data
acquisition.
4. Multiple fractures close together change the stresses within the formation. In
particular, there is an increase in the minimum horizontal stress close to the
wellbore [effectively a stress concentration or stress ‘shadow’ (Ketter et al., 2006)
from surrounding fractures]. This will increase the net pressure and could
potentially cause a stress reversal especially in a low-stress contrast reservoir
(Soliman et al., 2006). The stress reversal can create a longitudinal fracture close
to the wellbore. However, the stresses away from the wellbore will be less
affected and therefore the fracture can reorientate itself. Such a change in
direction will add tortuosity and screen-out risk. A cartoon showing a possible
outcome is shown in Figure 2.85. Few fracture simulators can deal with such
anisotropy (McDaniel and Surjaatmadja, 2007), although if the fracture geometry
can be predicted, the resulting flow performance can be assessed with a
numerical reservoir simulator.

2.4.4.1. Completion techniques for horizontal multiple fracture wells

There are a large number of completion techniques for multiple fracturing with
many new techniques added in recent years. The large number of fractures required
per well requires a lot of time. Any technique that can reduce the time per fracture
is attractive. Minimising the use of a drilling rig and reducing the number of trips in
hole per fracture can provide large cost savings. The increased use of fracturing
(especially multiple fractures in horizontal wells) coupled with high oil and gas
prices is also placing huge demands on the service sector, with stimulation boats, in
particular, in short supply. Rig-based pumping operations may be attractive, but
logistically more challenging.
One of the simplest methods of multiple fracturing is to use the proppant plug
technique as shown in Figure 2.79. For example, this technique has been
extensively used in the North Sea’s Valhall field (Norris et al., 2001; Rodrigues
et al., 2007) with the coiled tubing clean-out trip combined with the perforating of
the next interval. The back-produced proppant is also recycled.
An alternative to using proppant plugs is to drop balls into ball seats set in the
liner. Each treatment requires a progressively larger ball seat and corresponding ball.
The balls are back produced after the whole treatment. The requirement for
increasing ball seat size limits the number of zones to between four and six,
depending on liner and tubing sizes.