Advances in Laboratory-Scale Hydraulic Fracturing Experiments

Recent Advances in Hydraulic Fracturing for Enhanced Well Productivity: State of the Art Report

 Hydraulic fracturing of horizontal wells is considered as the main reason for the phenomenal increase in production of oil and gas from marginal and unconventional reservoirs in North America. The process evolution started more than a decade ago and has resulted in ultra-low permeability reservoirs producing at close to the same rates as some of the very prolific reservoirs in the Middle East,...

Hydraulic and Pneumatic Fracturing

Energy Analysis of Hydraulic Fracturing

In this paper, numerical simulations of circular boreholes under internal hydraulic pressure are carried out to investigate the energy transferred to the surrounding rock and the breakdown pressure. The simulations are conducted by using a micromechanical continuum damage model proposed by Golshani et al. (2006). The simulation results suggest that the borehole breakdown pressure and the energy...

Complex Fluids and Hydraulic Fracturing.

Nearly 70 years old, hydraulic fracturing is a core technique for stimulating hydrocarbon production in a majority of oil and gas reservoirs. Complex fluids are implemented in nearly every step of the fracturing process, most significantly to generate and sustain fractures and transport and distribute proppant particles during and following fluid injection. An extremely wide range of complex fl...

Simulating Fully 3D Hydraulic Fracturing

1.0 Introduction Hydraulic fracturing, the process of initiation and propagation of a crack by pumping fluid at relatively high flow rates and pressures, is one of several techniques for creating cracks in rock. Fractures in the earth's crust are desired for a variety of reasons, including enhanced oil and gas recovery, re-injection of drilling or other environmentally sensitive wastes, measure...