Rod-Shaped-Proppant Fracturing Boosts Production and Adds Reserves
Authors: Carpenter Chris 
Published: January 2017

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper IPTC 18086, “Novel Rod-Shaped-Proppant Fracturing Boosts Production and Adds Recoverable Reserves in Indonesia During Hydraulic-Fracturing Field-Revival Campaign,” by L. Soetikno and P. Artola, Schlumberger, and C. Guimaraes, Chevron, prepared for the 2014 International Petroleum Technology Conference, Kuala Lumpur, 10–12 December. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

In a fracturing campaign of three wells at Field X, a new unconventional proppant technology—a rod-shaped proppant—was used. The rod-shaped proppant is a high-strength ceramic proppant with an unconventional rod shape that has the unique benefit of delivering increased proppant-pack conductivities, higher and cleaner fracture length, and improved proppant-flowback control. After 6 months of production, all fractured wells in which the rod-shaped proppant was used delivered, on average, 25% higher oil per net pay compared with offset wells fractured with conventional proppant.

Introduction

Field X is a mature-waterflood field in the Central Sumatra basin. Currently, production is approximately 17,000 BOPD; most production comes from Formation Y, and a much smaller contribution comes from the shallower, but tighter, Formation X1 (reservoir characteristics are provided in the complete paper). A reservoir study for further field development of Formation X1 in Field X was conducted in 1999. On the basis of this study, it was determined that the recovery factor of Formation X1 was low (single-digit recovery). Given this low recovery factor, several options were considered to develop the remaining reserves better. The implementation of hydraulic fracturing was evaluated as one of the options to increase the oil recovery of the reservoir.

From 2006 to mid-2008, 21 fracturing jobs were performed to stimulate the X1 B sand; the jobs resulted in an average oil-production gain of 80 BOPD per well, and the overall success rate was 71%. Since that time, the operator has performed approximately 20 hydraulic fractures per year in Field X.

Fracturing Challenges and Treatment Evolution

One of the main challenges while fracturing in Field X, Formation X1, is achieving enough fracture half-length to increase the reservoir contact. As a typical low-permeability formation, its post-fracture productivity is driven by the effective fracture length created during the fracturing job. Post-treatment evaluations from several of the wells indicated that the lack of stress contrast between the target zone and the adjacent barriers has led to the creation of short fractures.

The rod-shaped proppant increased the conductivity of the proppant pack, which led to a better post-treatment fracture cleanup. Having better and earlier fracture cleanup increases the effective fracture length, which is essential when fracturing low-permeability formations. Besides providing much higher conductivity than intermediate-strength proppants (ISPs), the packing of rod-shaped proppant causes the rods to mechanically interlock to form a well-consolidated proppant pack that limits the proppant-flowback tendency without need of chemical surface modification to foster adhesion.