A Review of Hydraulic Fracturing and Latest Developments in Unconventional Reservoirs

Abstract

Hydraulic fracturing is a widely accepted and applied stimulation method in the unconventional oil and gas industry. With the increasing attention to unconventional reservoirs, hydraulic fracturing technologies have developed and improved more in the last few years. This study explores all applications of hydraulic fracturing methods to a great extent. It can be used as a guideline study, covering all the procedures and collected data for conventional reservoirs by considering the limited parameters of unconventional reservoirs. This paper intends to be a reference article containing all the aspects of the hydraulic fracturing method. A comprehensive study has been created by having a wide scope of examinations from the applied mechanisms to the technological materials conveyed from the different industries to utilize this technique efficiently. Furthermore, this study analyses the method, worldwide applications, advantages and disadvantages, and comparisons in different unconventional reservoirs. Various case studies that examine the challenges and pros & cons of hydraulic fracturing are included. Hydraulic fracturing is a promising stimulation technique that has been widely applied worldwide. It is challenging due to the tight and nanoporous nature, low permeability, complex geological structure, and in-situ stress field in unconventional reservoirs. Consequently, economic conditions and various parameters should be analyzed individually in each case for efficient applications. Therefore, this study provides the primary parameters and elaborate analysis of the techniques applied for a successful stimulation under SPECIFIC circumstances and provides a full spectrum of information needed for unconventional field developments. All the results are evaluated and detailed for each field case by providing the principles of applying hydraulic fracturing technologies. Many literature reviews provide different examples of hydraulic fraction methods; however, no study covers and links up both the main parameters and learnings from real cases worldwide. This study will fill this gap and illuminate the application of the hydraulic fracturing method.

Advancement in Hydraulic Fracturing for Improved Oil Recovery

“…This new type of fluids has a low friction loss in the wellbore with good carrying capacity for proppant. This type of fluid system has gained a lot of popularity and have been applied in several basins to increase the proppant concentrations or increase the number of clusters per stage while ensuring good proppant transport capabilities [9][10][11][12].…”

Evolution of Crack Source Mechanisms in Laboratory Hydraulic Fracturing on Harcourt Granite

“…Hydraulic fracturing has emerged as a dominant approach to generate extensive fractures or connected fracture networks. Apart from tectonic stress measurement (Fairhurst 1964) and rock formation preconditioning (He et al 2016), it has proven effective for stimulation purposes both in conventional and unconventional oil/gas reservoirs (Temizel et al 2022). Recently, it has been used overwhelmingly to extract shale gas of large depths, harvest thermal energy in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), and sequester carbon dioxide in deep rock formations (Fu et al 2017).…”

Review on High-Temperature-Resistant Viscoelastic Surfactant Fracturing Fluids: State-of-the-Art and Perspectives

“…Hydraulic fracturing is an effective technique for stimulating low-permeability and ultralow-permeability oil and gas reservoirs. − A large amount of fracturing fluid is pumped to the bottomhole under high pressure to form the induced fractures, and the proppant is carried and transported into the fractures. The proppant located in the fractures will prevent the fractures from fully closing after fracturing operation, , resulting in a channel with permeability several orders of magnitude higher than the permeability of the formation itself. − The viscosity and elastic properties of the fracturing fluid are crucial for creating the designed fracture geometry and controlling the suspension efficiency of proppants. − Therefore, a reasonable selection of fracturing fluid is very important in hydraulic fracturing treatment.…”