American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2015 - 77

SpecialReport: New Products/Technology
managing a well's life cycle. Optimized production can be managed holistically from the perforations, through the pump, and
through wellhead and surface equipment to ensure that a well or
an asset operates with the lowest cost per barrel of oil equivalent
produced. A strategic approach to a rejuvenation program design
limits second- or later-round investments to viable candidate wells
that can be rejuvenated at a fraction of the cost of drilling and
completing new wells.

Improving Performance
Field execution is the final step in the rejuvenation process,
and is crucial to the overall success of any project. To ensure a
successful job, fracture propagation monitoring technology is used
during refracturing. Real-time data monitoring during treatment
plus post-refrac analysis are crucial to refining and enriching reservoir models for the next refracturing operation.
If the operator is working with a service company that offers
a full spectrum of completion, stimulation and production technologies, it is recommended that the service company provide a
dedicated well site coordinator and project manager to oversee
the project. This person can serve as a single point of accountability for the project, typically delivering improved communications and more efficient job execution.
Strategic rejuvenation techniques have been effective at
generating production rates that equal or even exceed a well's initial production-and often with less rapid decline rates-while offering numerous economic and health, safety and environmental benefits over continually drilling and completing new wells
to maintain production volumes. Although the solution is new,
operators are beginning to see results that indicate excellent
prospects for improving financial performance through well rejuvenation, even at lower commodity prices.
At the same time, the industry is working to address another
key issue: If refracturing campaigns are to be implemented on

a large scale in unconventional resource plays, wells must be completed initially to make subsequent recompletions much easier
and generate more consistent results.
In the future, the pathway to success may be "refrac-ready"
wells, based on learnings from current and upcoming rejuvenation projects. Regardless of the technique chosen for each well,
new science-based and data-driven workflows will enable operators to replace raw horsepower with brainpower, and to rely on
detailed analysis and planning processes rather than field experimentation to ensure more productive and economic wells over
an asset's full life cycle.
r

SERGEY
KOTOV

Sergey Kotov is manager of integrated technology for
the global products and services group at Baker Hughes.
He has 20 years of oil and gas industry experience, specializing in production enhancement. He started his career in
Russia, and has held positions in all aspects of pumping operations across the globe. Kotov leads Baker Hughes'
NextWave™ production rejuvenation initiative to maximize
value from unconventional reservoir assets. He is an instructor for the Society of Petroleum Engineers' unconventional completions and fracturing course, as well as for the
Baker Hughes Shale Academy. Kotov holds an M.S. in petroleum engineering/oil and gas geology, and an M.A. in
linguistics.

HANS-CHRISTIAN
FREITAG

Artificial lift technology is one of the primary means of rejuvenating production in existing wells. Deploying the right lift solution based on well-specific application objectives can increase
production and boost recovery while lowering operating expenses.

Hans-Christian Freitag is vice president of integrated
technology for the global products and services group at
Baker Hughes. He began his career at Atlas Wireline Services in 1989, and worked in operations, geoscience and management positions around the world. He joined Baker Hughes in 2002, overseeing the development of advanced
logging-while-drilling technology. Freitag then held senior
and executive management positions in North America, the
Middle East and Asia Pacific. Before assuming his current
role, he served as vice president of Baker Hughes' unconventional resources group in the Eastern Hemisphere. Freitag holds a B.S. in physics and an M.S. in geophysics.
JULY 2015 77

American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2015