Improved Unconventional Gas Recovery With Energized Fracturing Fluids: Montney Example
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This February 2011 study compares the production and cost impacts of using energized and non-energized fracturing fluids on unconventional gas wells in the Montney formation. Analysis of roughly 24 to 36 months of gas production show significant benefit can be achieved from energized fracturing fluids and that their use warrants investigation in other unconventional oil and gas plays. There is illustrated potential for significant gas recovery improvement. There is also opportunity to reduce fracturing resources; the most significant of which is water and proppant consumption; there is also opportunity to reduce pumping rate and pressure in some instances. The potential environmental benefit of considerably lowering water consumption is attractive and may, in itself, justify their use. Energized fracturing treatments can cost more; however, the benefits are shown to far outweigh the incremental costs. The opportunity exists to improve unconventional well fracturing effectiveness and to reduce the resources used in those treatments by including nitrogen or carbon dioxide in the fracturing fluid. Based on the comparative assessment completed on the subject Montney wells in the Dawson Area of N.E. British Columbia, the use of energized fluids is shown to generate significantly improved well performance over those wells fractured with non-energized fluids. On average each well stimulated with energized fluids is forecast to potentially recover between 1.1 to 2.2 times as much gas as non-energized fracturing treatments the Study Areas 1 and 3 respectively. Area 1 Study compared the performance of Slick Water against Nitrified Slick Water and CO2 Foam fracturing treatments. The production analysis predicts an 11% incremental recovery improvement of 0.29 Bcf by using energized fluids. Though the treatment costs for the energized fracture treatments were seen to be higher, the value of this incremental recovery outweighs the additional cost with no incremental risk. Of note was the opportunity to reduce the fracturing fluid liquid volumes by over half with using CO2 Foam treatments rather than Slick Water. This shows the opportunity to improve production while also minimizing environmental impact. At marginal gas prices of $4.00/Mcf, the value of this incremental recovery approaches $1.4 MM from an incremental fracture cost investment of $500,000. Area 3 Study compared the performance of Gelled Frac Oil against CO2 Foam fracturing treatments. The production analysis showed a 124% incremental recovery improvement of 3.75 Bcf by using energized fluid fracturing treatments. At marginal gas prices of $4.00/Mcf, the value of this incremental recovery approaches $14.8 MM, from an incremental fracture cost investment of $400,000.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".