LSE tonight, page-6563

Hi Mancini.

I too initially thought that the backflow of frac juice was directly related to the ability of the reservoir to push both the frac juice and the HCs together, but as usual there r more complex dynamics going on here.

The last few annmnts seem to heavily intimate that a complex fracture has been achieved. The rate of frac juice backflow/ recovery and proppant placement being primary. Also the initial signs of salinity also indicate displacement of ions (metals in salt solution from clays) if my chemistry serves also circumstantially supports a complex fracture network.

However this complex fracture network also results in a slow recovery of frac fluid and actually absorbs the water based frac fluid by conversion of water molecules to hydroxyl molecules, just a different form of hydrolysed water but bound in the clay atomic structure,hence the disappearing act. It will also naturally slow the expulsion rate by this process as well which often leads to the use of coil tubing, swabbing etc etc.

So unfortunately or unfortunately as the case may be,we can't directly relate the rate of frac juice (FJ) expulsion to what we will see of HCs at the well head.

The rate of FJ expulsion must inevitably be linked to the over pressure of the reservoir but this will be masked by the slowing effect of the choke plates.

The thing that will really give them indication of overpressure effect will be pressure readings and I'm not so sure we'll see too much on this. After all if it's going to push the HCs at a decent rate then why microcomment on pressure stuff when ultimately its the result, good or bad, the
Market wants to see. But then they did tell us re salinity present in the FJ.

We mustn't forget this is still essentially a tight oil play that MAY have conventional rate potential.

However as I have said before this conventional rate may relate more to a slow rate of decline Rather than the faster average rate of higher viscosity lower API oils from conventional sands.

However given the potential size of this play, even at a Billion Bbbls external numbers, as long as the flow rate (100/150 Bbbls vertical eqv) is economic in project financials then a slow decline rate leads to a possible much higher recovery number, altho their internal number may already be set high depending on how optimistic they were being when doing the sums

d.