Avoid fracture-driven interference

An operator in West Texas planned to zipper frac two infill wells in the same section. The wells were adjacent to another operator's well, which was 1,000 ft away and had been producing for 6 months. The main objective was to minimize any unwanted fracture-driven interference and improve the production performance of the planned infill wells. Infill wells in the area tend to produce ~40% less than nearby parent wells because of fracture-driven interaction.

Optimize stimulation with technology

BroadBand Shield service constrains fracture growth with far-field diversion, minimizing the risk of communicating with neighboring wells or fracturing into undesirable or depleted zones. It is deployed with WellWatcher Stim stimulation monitoring service to improve fracturing with nearly real-time confirmation of downhole events. Proprietary algorithms decode return pressure pulses during stimulation treatments to detect and verify critical events such as interstage diversion, interstage isolation, and fracture-driven interactions in offset wells.

Outperform the parent wells

BroadBand Shield service was pumped on the last 20 stages of infill Well 1, where the lateral was directly parallel to the parent well. WellWatcher Stim service was used on infill Well 2 to monitor for fracture-driven interaction and provide real-time alerts of any communication.

After the stimulation, analysis of the production data indicated that normalized oil production from both infill wells outperformed that of the parent well. Infill Well 1, treated with the BroadBand Shield service, achieved ~10% higher production performance as compared with that of infill Well 2, farther away from the parent well. No detrimental production impact was observed in the parent well after the infill well stimulation treatments, indicating no negative fracture-driven interactions occurred.