First Successful Application of an Environment Friendly Fracturing Fluid During On-The-Fly Proppant Fracturing

With the increasing demand for natural gas, fracturing fluid technology needs to develop to enable optimized well completion operations with minimum ecological impact. The recent development of environmentally friendly polymer-free fracturing fluids — with superior operational performance — represents a major technological advance in the petroleum industry. The use of these new fluids during fracturing operations has the following benefits: minimized environmental footprint and formation damage, operational efficiency and simplicity, and maximized fracture conductivity. This paper discusses the first successful deployment, of an environmentally friendly polymer-free fracturing fluid, during on-the-fly proppant fracturing in Saudi Arabia. Also, the paper discusses the optimum layout of the fracturing equipment used during the job execution. The fluid was used to fracture a gas zone located between two water zones. Therefore, one of the main objectives of the treatment was to control the height of the fracture to not break through and contaminate the water-bearing zones. In addition, the fluid exhibited a low friction pressure and excellent proppant-carrying capacity. Moreover, the overall cost of this fracturing operation is in line with conventional, polymer-based fluid fracturing approaches. Evaluation of the post-treatment results demonstrated the following: very positive well productivity, improved fracture geometry (longer fractures with better height containment), and faster fracture cleanup time.