Sizing gelant treatments in hydraulically fractured production wells

Often, when production wells are stimulated by hydraulic fracturing, the fracture unintentionally extends through shale barriers into water zones, causing substantially increased water production. Gelant treatments have frequently been applied in an attempt to correct this problem. However, the design of the gelant volumes for these applications has been strictly empirical, and consequently, the success rates for these treatments have been erratic. In this paper, we develop a sound engineering basis for sizing gelant treatments. We present a simple 11-step procedure for sizing gelant treatments in hydraulically fractured production wells. We incorporated this procedure in user-friendly graphical-user-interface software.

Sizing gelant treatments in hydraulically fractured production wells Conference Paper