We hope you can join us, and make the most of SPE Distinguished Lecturer–Amit Singh visit with our section to present his paper "Hydraulic Fracture Design Evolution:  Recent Advances in Proppant Transport Understanding"

SPE Distinguished Lecturers are industry experts and outstanding speakers, nominated by their peers, to share their knowledge and expertise on the latest industry trends and technologies with SPE members throughout the world through visits to local sections. 

Abstract:

Effective and economic proppant placement in hydraulically created fractures has been one of key objectives of hydraulic fracture stimulation. Many different proppants, fracture fluids, and proppant placement methodologies have been historically used to achieve desired proppant conductivity and conductive surface area in reservoir. The understanding of the proppant transport mechanism has played a key role in this design evolution to achieve the goal of increased productivity at low cost. The traditional proppant transport laboratory study with standard slot flow test captured basic flow characteristics and shaped historical hydraulic fracture design practices. The standard slot flow test with parallel plates represented only a simplified planar fracture with homogeneous constant width and confined height, and thus, was incapable of capturing proppant transport phenomena impacted by realistic fracture features. With hydraulic fracture design evolution and increased activity specially in unconventional resources (UCR), it is critical to consider proppant transport behavior in realistic fracture features including lateral and vertical tortuosity, variable width, leak-off, fluid dynamics replicating upward fracture growth, etc. 

This presentation will share the recent advances in understanding of proppant transport from advanced laboratory and field studies; and how these novel learnings and important design considerations should be applied to optimize a "reservoir-centric hydraulic fracture design". It will also highlight opportunity and need to optimize both proppant and fracture fluid properties along with injection sequence for effective and economic proppant placement thereby achieving well stimulation goals. 

Biography:

Amit Singh is a Senior Advisor for Well Stimulation technologies at Chevron with more than 20 years’ experience. He champions development and implementation of new technology and strategy for completion optimization. He has diverse experience of research and development as well as field operation as technology leader in hydraulic fracturing. He holds a BTech degree in Petroleum Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (ISM Dhanbad). He has published over 25 technical papers and been speaker at multiple international conferences and workshops. He is a Committee Member for SPE HFTC and URTeC, and Associate Editor of SPE’s Production and Operations Journal.