Hydro‐frac monitoring using ground time‐domain electromagnetics

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs motivation for considering new electromagnetic techniques for hydraulic fracture monitoring, we develop a simple financial model for the net present value offered by geophysical characterization to reduce the error in stimulated reservoir volume calculations. This model shows that even a 5% improvement in stimulated reservoir volume for a 1 billion barrel (bbl.) field results in over 1 billion U.S. dollars (US$) in net present value over 24 years for US$100/bbl. oil and US$0.5 billion for US$50/bbl. oil. The application of conductivity upscaling, often used in electromagnetic modeling to reduce mesh size and thus simulation runtimes, is shown to be inaccurate for the high electrical contrasts needed to represent steel‐cased wells in the earth. Fine‐scale finite‐difference modeling with 12.22‐mm cells to capture the steel casing and fractures shows that the steel casing provides a direct current pathway to a created fracture that significantly enhances the response compared with neglecting the steel casing. We consider conductively enhanced proppant, such as coke‐breeze‐coated sand, and a highly saline brine solution to produce electrically conductive fractures. For a relatively small frac job at a depth of 3 km, involving 5,000 bbl. of slurry and a source midpoint to receiver separation of 50 m, the models show that the conductively enhanced proppant produces a 15% increase in the electric field strength (in‐line with the transmitter) in a 10‐Ωm background. In a 100‐Ωm background, the response due to the proppant increases to 213%. Replacing the conductive proppant by brine with a concentration of 100,000‐ppm NaCl, the field strength is increased by 23% in the 100‐Ωm background and by 2.3% in the 10‐Ωm background. All but the 100,000‐ppm NaCl brine in a 10‐Ωm background produce calculated fracture‐induced electric field increases that are significantly above 2%, a value that has been demonstrated to be observable in field measurements.