Halliburton launches FracInsight to eliminate fracturing of nonproductive rock

By Joanne Liou, Associate Editor

In North American shales, one-third of perforation clusters do not yield oil or gas. Building on the CYPHER 2.0 Seismic-to-Stimulation Service, Halliburton has developed FracInsight to optimize stage and cluster placement. The new service selects perforation and fracturing stage locations from available formation evaluation data along a horizontal well. “We’re going to take all the data we have and do a much better job of evaluating what’s changing in that rock along the horizontal well,” Dan Buller, Global Advisor, Principal Petrophysicist for Halliburton, said at the 2014 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Amsterdam on 27 October.

CYPHER is a collaborative workflow that links geoscience and reservoir, drilling, and completion engineering to allow operators to better predict and produce unconventional reserves. FracInsight fits into the workflow by providing information on where to frac. “It can be run as a stand-alone service where you can take available data and do a local geomodel, but it’s designed to fit within CYPHER,” Mr Buller stated. “Without knowing where your well is at and where you’re stimulating within the geology within your particular well, you can’t apply the reservoir models, and you can’t apply the completion models design. This is all about the completion that is going to feed to reservoir.”

FracInsight creates more consistent fracturing operations with an engineered completion rather than a geometric completion along the horizontal section to reduce fracturing on nonproductive rock, he explained. The service reduces inconsistent breakdown pressure and reduces inconsistent treating pressures.

Currently the new service is available in North America, including Canada and Mexico, with 11 trained analysts.