SBIR Phase I: Efficient Hydraulic Fracturing through Fracture Manipulation in Highly Heterogeneous Rock Formations for Enhanced Energy Production with Environmental Sustainability

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to greatly improve the efficiency of hydraulic fracturing oil/gas wells in tight shale reservoirs and other highly heterogeneous oil/gas producing formations. Such increase in efficiency will drastically reduce the quantity of fracture water required for the same oil/gas production. This will yield reduced overall hydraulic fracturing effort for the same recovery of oil/gas, thereby much reducing the environmental impact and providing improved economics. The innovation will allow fracture growth manipulation to allow cutting across discontinuities such as bed/layer interfaces in some cases or to stop at an interface to limit fracture height growth in other cases. Commercialization of the concept using new fracturing fluids and pumping techniques offers a large market opportunity for the several hundred billion dollars annual market. Increased recovery from these low fluid mobility formations is critical for sustaining the continued move toward energy independence, for maintaining the significant economic development being provided to the Nation, and for reducing the carbon footprint associated with recovering gas from these formations. Additionally, this work will extend the scientific understanding of fluid driven fracture propagation, particularly in highly heterogeneous materials. The technology for true fracture manipulation is novel and offers the potential for a large step change. The objectives of this Phase I research project are to establish priorities for key parameters for new fracturing fluids and fracturing techniques that have been developed that would manipulate the fracture propagation in a desirable manner. This will be accomplished by approximate modeling of hydraulic fracture propagation used for horizontal well completions, and validating with simple laboratory tests. The research will include calculations in a practical manner of the transient fluid-driven fracture propagation considering the reservoir rock fabric. The calculations will vary key fracturing fluid properties, and based on the calculations laboratory tests will be conducted to validate predictions. The fracturing fluid properties change will be accomplished by fluid variation and by pumping/injection schedule variations. Manipulating the fracture propagation by using the fracturing fluid properties in collaboration with the reservoir rock fabric is unique. In some cases the intent is to cause the fracture to step across a plane of weakness to proceed into another 'layer'. In other cases it is desirable to cause the fracture to step-over and branch to create a more complex fracture network. Still in other cases, it is desirable to limit the fracture extension by stopping at an interface and thus maintaining fracture height containment.