Intelligent fracture creation for shale gas development

Craig C. Douglas, Guan Qin, Nathan Collier, Bin Gong

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Shale gas represents a major fraction of the proven reserves of natural gas in the United States and a collection of other countries. Higher gas prices and the need for cleaner fuels provides motivation for commercializing shale gas deposits even though the cost is substantially higher than traditional gas deposits. Recent advances in horizontal drilling and multistage hydraulic fracturing, which dramatically lower costs of developing shale gas fields, are key to renewed interest in shale gas deposits. Hydraulically induced fractures are quite complex in shale gas reservoirs. Massive, multistage, multiple cluster treatments lead to fractures that interact with existing fractures (whether natural or induced earlier). A dynamic approach to the fracturing process so that the resulting network of reservoirs is known during the drilling and fracturing process is economically enticing. The process needs to be automatic and done in faster than real-time in order to be useful to the drilling crews.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProcedia Computer Science
PublisherElsevier BV
Pages1745-1750
Number of pages6
DOIs
StatePublished - May 22 2011

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01

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