Standardized Reporting of Hydraulic Fracturing Treatments Supports Production Optimization and Meeting Regulatory Requirements

Hydraulic Fracturing treatments generate large volumes of valuable data. The industry recognizes this data can be leveraged to optimize various parameters for oil and gas production from a well. Additionally, there are evolving regulatory reporting requirements that require a standardized exchange of information with the service providers and the regulatory organizations. Historically, data was provided to the well operator in custom paper or varying digital formats, resulting in delays, overhead, and inconsistent information during the database import process.

In response, the Energistics^© global consortium ¹ united a wide variety of industry professionals to develop the stimJob Object open exchange standard for hydraulic fracturing in November, 2010. The stimJob Object standard was subsequently updated and incorporated into version 1.4.1.1 of the WITSML™ (Wellsite Information Transfer Standard Markup Languag) standard as released in July, 2012.

The stimJob WITSML ² report was initially deployed to the high volume USA market as a post-job report for each stage of the hydraulic fracturing operation. It is an XML file containing a data record of the treatment including rates, pressures, volumes, densities and additives. The digital data format conforms to WITSML-compliant requirements for use in several commercial applications. The stimJob report utilizes the current version of WITSML, v1.4.1.1, which is a further refinement of the data-object specifications for ease of implementation and use. WITSML is designed for the seamless flow of well data between the operators, service companies, and regulatory agencies, to speed and enhance decision making and reporting.

This paper outlines the content of the stimJob report, how the data is exchanged with the operator and the beneficial results from the early adoption of the standard into the stimulation workflow.