Research progress and prospect of the waterless hydraulic fracturing technology

Abstract

Presently, international oilfields mainly adopt hydraulic fracturing technology to stimulate the oil and gas production. However, the conventional hydraulic fracturing technology is always faced with the problem of large amount of water consumption and related pollution after fracturing, and it is not conducive to the development of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs. So the application of conventional hydraulic fracturing technology is greatly limited. The waterless hydraulic fracturing technology can effectively solve the above problems. But the application of waterless hydraulic fracturing technology is less, and the theoretical research is relatively short in China where the reserve of unconventional oil and gas resources is abundant with the relative lack of water resources. If the technological difficulties of non-aqueous fracturing fluids can be broken through, then non-aqueous fracturing fluid technology will bring significant economic and environmental benefits to the development of unconventional oil and gas resources in China. Based on the investigation of the domestic and foreign data, this paper introduces the research status on non-aqueous fracturing fluid technology and analyzes several commonly used fracturing fluid technologies. This article mainly introduced the characteristics of several kinds of waterless fracturing fluids technical, such as carbon dioxide fracturing fluid, alcohol based fracturing fluid and hydrocarbon fracturing fluid, including their strengths and weaknesses. The working mechanism of liquid CO2 fracturing fluid, supercritical CO2 fracturing fluid, alcohol based fracturing fluid, oil based fracturing fluid and low carbon hydrocarbon fracturing fluid is also studied in the paper. Finally, this paper summarizes the key points in research direction and the key problems in the application of the waterless fracturing fluid. The paper can provide some reference value for the theoretical research and practical application of the waterless hydraulic fracturing.