Sustainable Energy in America: 2018 Factbook
More efficient completion technology provides for more environmentally friendly production of our energy resources. Developing a better understanding of stimulated reservoirs and new completion techniques will help industry more efficiently recover these resources.
This premise, shared by Eddie Johnston, Senior Vice President of Research and Technology Development, lies at the core of GTI’s Hydraulic Fracturing Test Site (HFTS) program. The high-profile HFTS, collaborating with industry and government, holds the potential to fundamentally change the hydraulic fracturing process and improve resource recovery rates. It could also eliminate the need for thousands of wells, which would provide a tremendous reduction in the environmental footprint of production.
The HFTS represents the most comprehensive hydraulic fracturing research to date. Unique experiments in the Permian Basin in Texas are yielding critical new data that will help improve the efficiency, safety, and reliability of the hydraulic fracturing process. The goal is to understand fracturing, optimize required well spacing, and reduce the environmental impacts of responsible development.
The research is producing new datasets of unprecedented value and providing a first-ever look at how induced underground fractures spread within horizontal wellbores. By optimizing the network of natural and induced fractures, recovery can be greatly increased from current rates that are typically below 10% for shale oil and gas.
These crucial new findings will influence how thousands of future wells are drilled in West Texas shales, as well as other locations and plays in different basins.
GTI is collaborating with operators and service companies to start a new project (HFTS #2) that will focus on the Delaware portion of the Permian basin. Multiple companies have expressed interest in hosting the test site and participating in the research.
More detail about this initiative can be found online at http://www.gastechnology.org/Expertise/Pages/Hydraulic-Fracturing-Test-Site.aspx
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