Hydraulic Fracturing in Gas and Oil Wells - Research Paper Example

There are major efforts of attempting to attain at least 80% for gas recovery and 50% for oil recovery (Ruckheim et al., 2005). Hydraulic fracturing is known to raise the recovery factor which corresponds to the production economic cutoff. For such reasons, together with other reasons, hydraulic fracturing has been considered to be one of the most popular completion operations in gas and oil reservoirs (Daneshy 2010). The hydraulic ability to increase the reserves has been indicated by Veatch et al. (1989) Hydraulic fracturing can be defined as fluid pumping at a high pressure and rate so that the rock can be broken.

Ideally, there will be the formation of a fracture that has two wings which are equal in length on both borehole sides. After the fracture has been formed, the fluids will leak off into the formation in a progressive manner after the stopping of the pumping. In this case, the fracture will be closed where the conductivity will be eliminated. Two methods could be applied to keep the fracture open and they include proppant or acid. Basically, the hydraulic fracturing classification is based on the above-indicated methods and they usually act to keep the fracture open.

The role of the acid is to etch the fracture faces with the aim of preventing them from fitting closely together. On the other hand, the proppant acts by packing the fracture to keep it open. There are several advantages of using proppant over acids and have been explored by Zoveidavianpoor et al. (2011) The first stage in hydraulic fracturing includes target formation as well as choosing the target. These are considered to be very critical stages in decision making regarding the entire hydraulic fracturing treatment process.

Candidate well selection that is of high quality results to attaining successful hydraulic fracturing(Vincent 2011) despite this candidate well selection is seen not to be a straightforward process as well as a common practice, a well unified and defined  approach does not exist in order to select a standard candidate wells across several geological settings(Reeves et al. 2000). It is very important to select the first well by candidate well selection phase to achieve a successful performance.