/www.civil.engineering.ualber...soakingresearchleadstomoreefficie...

/www.civil.engineering.ualber...soakingresearchleadstomoreefficientwells.aspxBy Tarwinder Rai November 4, 2014 Ask an oil company to use water to recover oil and they might laugh it off as nothing but a joke. But a new research-backed concept by petroleum engineering professor Hassan Dehghanpour has companies rethinking procedures. Soaking – a concept in which oil wells in unconventional reservoirs are shut down for a short time after fracturing operations– actually improves the flow of oil and gas and leads to higher oil and gas production explained Dehghanpour. “This is relatively new,” said Dehghanpour. “Initially, oil companies didn’t want the water to react with shale because in conventional oil reservoirs the reaction of water with clay minerals can be damaging, but, in unconventional reservoirs such reactions can act as a driving force for extracting oil or gas from the tight rock matrix.” Dehghanpour was recently awarded the Regional Young Member Outstanding Service Award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers of Canada. This award recognizes his contributions to industry for providing practical solutions, specifically for the responsible development of unconventional oil and gas resources. His first phase of the project required him to extensively research hydraulic fracturing and help the shale gas and tight oil industry design environmentally friendly fracturing techniques that would optimize operations in Canada. When fracturing takes place, fresh water is used to create pathways (fractures) and penetrate the shale reserves so oil and gas can be produced. With only 20 per cent of the fresh water being recovered from fracturing, Dehghanpour says it was important to understand where the rest of the unrecovered water went. He found that while a majority of the fracturing water leaks off into the rocks, some of the fracturing water remains trapped inside hydraulic fractures. “This was an important find because the industry wants to recover the highest amount of water possible and reuse it for future operations and fracturing. We also developed new techniques to characterize the created fracture network by interpreting the chemistry and flow rate of the produced water,” he said. “This helped the industry to evaluate their fracturing operations and the lessons we learned can be applied to future oil and gas development plans.” After extensive laboratory and field studies, Deghanpour introduced the concept of soaking the fractured oil and shale gas wells. Experiments conducted by him and his graduate students showed that soaking unconventional wells can improve oil and gas recovery by a mechanism called counter-current imbibition. “During the soaking time, the rock imbibes the fracturing fluid and in turn the oil and gas are expelled out more efficiently,” he explained. “The soaking period provides enough time for the transp. Apologies if already posted but found this on another site , hopefully it gives some other small time LT investor's some hope