ABSTRACT
A major consideration in fracture stimulation of the Bartlesville formation in Eastern Oklahoma is the lack of competent barriers to prevent downward fracture growth out of the oil-producing interval and into the water-producing interval. This has resulted in sizeable increases in water production with little or no effective stimulation of oil production.
Attempts have been made to design stimulation treatments to minimize the downward fracture growth through the control of job size and pumping rates. This approach has produced some successful fracture treatments as will be discussed in this paper, but evidence indicates that in many cases proppant has been placed in the water-producing interval despite these measures.
This paper will present a different approach to minimizing water production resulting from hydraulic fracturing. It is based on the assumption that downward fracture growth cannot be sufficiently controlled using existing procedures. This approach will present the use of density controlled foam fracturing to selectively place proppants in the upper portion of the fracture adjacent to the oil-producing interval. Included are case histories of density control fracture treatments as well as those of conventional treatments performed in the Bartlesville. Also included are radioactive tracer surveys to support selective proppant placement using a density controlled foam fracturing process.
