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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Schlumberger's HIWAY Frac -- Mentioned in CLR's Earnings Conference Call

In today's CLR earnings conference call, Harold Hamm mentioned a "hiway frac."

This is a link to the process.

Schlumberger has a huge operation in the Bakken and a huge industrial park east of Williston.

Schlumberger describes the process as this:
To allow more fracture conductivity in conventional fracturing jobs, HiWAY channel fracturing fundamentally changes the way that proppant fractures generate conductivity. It engineers stable flow channels into the proppant pack that are connected from the tip of the fracture back toward the wellbore, creating the optimal connection between the reservoir and the wellbore. The productivity of the fracture is decoupled from the actual permeability of the proppant used, so rather than flowing through the proppant pack, hydrocarbons flow through stable channels—meaning infinite fracture conductivity.
Bottom line: "rather than flowing through the proppant pack that has just been pumped explosively into the shale, the oil flows through stable channels."

CLR's Harold Hamm says this about "highway fracking":
And we just pumped our first hiway frac, which pulses proppant into the frac zone instead of injecting it under continuous but increasing concentrations.
Note: the SeekingAlpha transcript had "hiway" spelled slightly different but I corrected it to eliminate search engine confusion.

4 comments:

  1. For more on HIWAY, check Petrohawk's website, and their 1Q or so conference call.

    Anon 1.

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  2. Correction. Year End call.

    How time flies.

    Anon 1.

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  3. Thank you. I appreciate that. I was out and about all evening so it may be a day or so before I get caught up with e-mail, notes, etc., and can get to Petrohawk and HIWAY.

    I have to believe Harold Hamm when he says there has been a technology revolution in oil production in the Williston Basin since 2007. Wow, that feels like a long time ago.

    Again, thank you for your comments regarding CHK. You were right; I was too skeptical.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you -- year-end call, got it. I often make same mistake trying to keep quarters (as in first quarter, second quarter, etc) straight.

    ReplyDelete

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