Sizing Gelant Treatments in Hydraulically Fractured Production Wells

R.S. Seright, J. Liang, and Mailin Seldal – 1998

Abstract

When production wells stimulated by hydraulic fracturing unintentionally break into water zones, substantially increased water production results. This paper develops an engineering basis for designing and sizing gelant treatments in hydraulically fractured production wells. Gelant penetrates a short distance from the fracture face into porous rock associated with both water and hydrocarbon zones. Success requires that the gel reduce permeability to water much more than to hydrocarbons. A simple 11-step procedure for sizing these gelant treatments was developed and incorporated into user-friendly graphical-user-interface software. Prior to this work, gelant volume sizing was strictly empirical with no engineering basis.

Key Takeaways

  • An 11-step engineering procedure for sizing gelant treatments in hydraulically fractured production wells provides the first non-empirical basis for treatment volume design — replacing rule-of-thumb approaches with mechanistic calculation.
  • Gelant penetrates a short distance from the fracture face into both water and hydrocarbon zones — treatment success requires that the resulting gel reduce permeability to water substantially more than permeability to hydrocarbons.
  • Prior to this work, gelant volume sizing in fractured production wells was strictly empirical — some vendors used half a day’s production volume, others used barrels per foot of pay, others targeted a specific radius. All lacked engineering basis.
  • The 11-step procedure was incorporated into graphical-user-interface software available for download, making it accessible to field engineers without specialized modeling expertise.
  • The most successful gel treatments in production wells occur when excess water production is caused by flow behind pipe or channeling through fractures — not matrix water coning — and this work specifically targets the fracture-channeling case.
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