GroundMetrics awarded refracturing contract in the Barnett Shale

GroundMetrics Inc., a world-leading electromagnetic survey company and oil and gas technology pioneer, was awarded a contract by one of the top ten frac'ing companies for a refracturing (refrac) survey on an oilfield in the Barnett shale in Texas. This is the first electromagnetic survey of a refrac.

Refrac refers to the process of frac'ing the same well multiple times to stimulate output and increase reserves. A Bloomberg Intelligence analysis of refrac'd wells revealed initial production rates more than 30% higher than the original. For an industry suffering a 50% drop in the price of crude over the past year, that additional production could be a panacea. The technique is expected to expand from a few hundred horizontal wells to many thousands over the next few years.

"New technologies that can better pinpoint the areas of left-behind oil and gas from the original fracturing are being rapidly developed and oil service companies are betting big money on it," stated Starr Spencer in Oilgram News.

GroundMetrics will use its advanced sensor systems to monitor the refrac and provide critical data to help field managers optimise production and improve refrac efficiency. No other method can directly track where the fluid is going, a critical weakness of other popular monitoring technologies like seismic. The same sensor technology has been deployed for surveys on conventional and unconventional oilfields worldwide.

"We are very excited about what this means for the industry," commented Mark Wilkinson, VP of Unconventional at GroundMetrics. "With oil prices where they are, operators are looking for any edge they can find. Technology is the only defensible advantage there is over the long-term. GroundMetrics Full-Field Resistivity Survey will provide visibility into the refrac process that was never possible before. This survey will allow field managers to make data-driven production decisions. At the end of the day, it will allow operators to get more oil out of the ground and extend the life of their wells."

Edited from press release by Angharad Lock

Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/drilling-and-production/24112015/groundmetrics-awarded-refracturing-contract-in-the-barnett-shale-491/