The Third Way: How BKV Turned to ‘Hybrid’ Refracs in the Barnett Shale

Abstract

While refracturing has maintained a backseat role in the US shale sector, with capital overwhelmingly flowing toward new well programs, there’s been a notable exception brewing in the Barnett Shale. Last year, from within the asset that holds the very well that ignited the shale revolution, gas producer BKV Corp. announced that it had become the top refracturing operator in the US. From the end of 2021 to March of this year, covering a span of just 18 months, the operator completed an eye‑opening 369 refracs. The breath of life BKV pumped down those north Texas wells was enough to temporarily arrest the decline rate of the most mature of all shale plays. BKV reports that the Barnett refrac program has generated 371 Bcf/e of newly proved reserves with a finding and development cost of $0.79/Mcf/e. But putting these figures aside, what else stands out about the campaign is how it was done. To rejuvenate many of the vintage wellbores, the Denver‑based operator, a subsidiary of a Thailand‑based energy conglomerate, said it developed an innovative approach called the “hybrid expandable liner system.” “It is very simply a combination of both bullhead and liner methods where we attempt to minimize the downsides and maximize the positives of both,” Kevin Eichinger, a senior completions engineer for BKV, explained at a recent SPE gathering in Houston. The concept involves installing as little as a few hundred feet of expandable steel patches over a well’s original heel‑side perforations to allow for several new plug‑ and‑perforation stages. The toe‑end of the wellbore is left unlined but new perforations can be added before it is stimulated using a bullhead treatment. Eichinger, who leads the operator’s refrac candidate selection and job design efforts, described the end result as “liner‑like performance without the cost of a full liner.” The completions engineer outlined these and other details while presenting a technical paper he recently coauthored. The subject of a number of industry meetings since it was first published in June, URTeC 3855094 discusses BKV’s inaugural hybrid refracturing trial that achieved twice the average output of neighboring bullhead refracs while also besting legacy liner refrac performance achieved from operated legacy wells. The success of this first attempt paved the way for hundreds of subsequent jobs in the Barnett where the company operates or holds interest in more than 6,900 wells across 460,000 gross acres. More on BKV’s hybrid refracs follows, but worth noting is that the firm is in the midst of a “quiet period” pending the outcome of a potential move to become a publicly traded company in the US and has refrained from issuing updates about the current state of its operations in either the Barnett or the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.