Pre-Loads: Successful Mitigation of Damaging Frac Hits in the Eagle Ford

Abstract

Abstract Although infill drilling and tighter well spacing have improved the production and economic return for North American Shale leases, these practices have intensified a problematic side effect often referred to as Frac Hits (Jacobs 2017). Frac hits occur when a new ‘child’ well is completed near an already producing well and the frac treatment interacts with the older parent well, usually resulting in either total loss of production or diminished producing capacity (King et al. 2017). In some fields, such as the Haynesville, frac hits have been reported to improve parent well production (Esquivel & Blasingame 2017). However, as these wells produce longer in to their life cycle, that positive impact is less certain to result in a long-term recovery improvement. In the past, the loss of the parent well was not associated with a significant loss in production compared to the new wells. However, with increasingly larger completion designs executed on wells spaced ever closer together, the impact of frac hits has grown substantially in the past few years (Daneshy 2017; Rainbolt & Esco 2018). Frac hits are not a new phenomenon in the development of North America's Shale fields. Usually first encountered by operators during the progression from Hold By Production (HBP) to infill drilling, they have been widely documented and studied over the past 6+ years. However, apart from avoiding frac hits entirely through a fully integrated field development plan, the existing industry literature does not provide a flexible, repeatable, cost effective solution to mitigating frac hits. Refracs have been discussed for parent wells next to the new infills, but economics have been difficult to justify on more recently completed wells with larger completion designs, and refracs do not address the challenge of third or higher generation infill activities where several wells are at risk of being frac hit. This document will cover the development of the frac hit mitigation technique that the authors developed in their company's Eagle Ford acreage and which is now employed as standard practice for all infill completion campaigns in both the Eagle Ford and Permian.