The Three Forks Formation in the state of North Dakota is one of the main plays with the record of one million barrels a day of hydrocarbon production, recently, combined with the Bakken. Three Forks formation is highly heterogeneous due to the presence of interbedded shale layers. The reservoir properties vary significantly within the basin, which makes the stimulation designs challenging. It's well understood that to maintain the production, well completion and stimulation designs should be applied in a given field in Williston Basin; in this paper we combined several data sources in a multidisciplinary manner and compared completion design parameters such as: amount of proppant injected and type, fracturing fluid type, using acid, etc. with the goal of improving well productivity. The main objective of this study is to investigate how different fracturing components can impact the production. The production history data was limited to the days after the stimulation. Our investigation is based on proprietary and public data of the Three Forks Formation. We also included the name of each operator active in a single field to make an assessment of how different companies are performing completion and fracturing design compared to production.

This content is only available via PDF.
You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.