American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2015 - 73

SpecialReport: ED&P: Eagle Ford

Refracturing Fits Operating Strategies
By Kari Johnson
Special Correspondent

As operating companies continue to
focus on improving operating efficiencies
and maximizing asset value, refracturing
existing wells is finding its way into their
arsenals of optimization technology.
Exact catalysts may vary. Sanchez
Energy reports refracturing older Eagle
Ford Shale wells was a natural outgrowth
of efforts to stretch its completion dollars
farther.
BP, meanwhile, saw an opportunity
to economically squeeze more barrels
out of older wells.
But regardless of the motivation, company spokesmen advise, effective refracturing is not a haphazard endeavor.
Whether it is applying today's stimulation
strategies to older wells initially completed
earlier on the learning curve or improving
fracture geometries in underperforming
wells, candidate selection is key.
And it's not just about more rapid recovery or restoring initial production rates.
"We are looking for increases in overall
reserves and production," declares Sanchez
Energy Senior Vice President and Chief
Operating Officer Chris Heinson.
For Sanchez, Heinson comments, interest in refracturing has grown out of a
yearlong focus on increasing efficiencies
in operations as well as its supply chain.
"We saw improvements in regular drilling
and completions, and implemented a fundamental change in our procurement
process," he confirms. "The disproportionate improvement in completion costs
created an additional incentive to start
looking seriously at refracturing."
He says Sanchez now directly sources
its sand and chemicals, dramatically reducing the cost to pump stimulation jobs.
The company contracts and manages all
transportation from source to site. "We
take full responsibility for ensuring that
all deliveries occur on time, just like a
service company would," Heinson notes.
Almost immediately after Sanchez unbundled its completions in October 2014,
it was able to shave $1.0 million from
completion costs, Heinson calculates. "Our
completion costs have come down by
about 50 percent over last year," he continues. "Where last year we were spending
$4.0 million or more for completions, we
now are spending $2.2 million."

All-in well costs are trending below
$4.0 million for drilling and completion,
he adds.
The learning curve was painful at first,
Heinson relates. "It is very complicated
and hard to get right," he expands. "It is
not for everyone, but we have seen huge
benefits."
Because Sanchez contracts for steady
deliveries of sand and chemical, Heinson
says the company needs to maintain a
certain activity level. Refracturing represents an opportunity to leverage the drop
in completion costs and complement new
drilling activities during down markets.

Stepping Into Refracturing
Sanchez Energy completed its first
five Eagle Ford refractures in August.
Heinson reports the wells were adjacent
to new drilling to leverage the cost and
potentially diminish any "frac hit." He
notes the company has a large inventory
of wells across 226,000 net acres in the
Eagle Ford, and estimates 20 percent
could be candidates for refracturing.
Sanchez also has approximately 69,000
net acres in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale
(TMS), but has not yet begun refracturing
activities there. "The mechanics of the
Eagle Ford are so much better understood
than the TMS, so we are going to do our
testing in the Eagle Ford," explains Heinson.
He predicts lessons from that play
will carry over to the TMS because there
are a lot of similarities between the two
plays, even though the TMS is a little bit
deeper and has higher pressure, so it is a
little more challenging. "The Eagle Ford
has been the natural place to begin,"
Heinson affirms.
He says Sanchez is taking a "high
science" approach to selecting both the
best candidates for refracturing, and the
methods for re-entering the well and contacting new rock. "We are following
closely the academic works of several
professors at Texas A&M and the University of Texas," he mentions. "Their
in-depth research can help us make better
choices for our refrac program."
The first criterion for candidate selection
is age. "We look for wells completed
before 2013 that had low amounts of
proppant loading or high amounts of gel,"
Heinson reveals. "These wells are suitable
for refracturing because they likely de-

veloped near-wellbore, dense frac packs."
Observing that today's fracture stimulations are much longer and generally
thinner, using smaller proppant in higher
volume, he remarks, "Modern jobs have
much more extensive frac wings, and
probably have taken advantage of some
existing natural fractures in a way that
those early fractures were not able to do."

High Grading Candidates
Heinson describes the ideal candidate
for refracturing as a well that had 15-20
stages and fewer than 5 million pounds
of proppant in its original completion.
New wells are being completed with
more than 10 million pounds of proppant
and 25 stages. This tightening of stages
and doubling of proppant has increased
fracture extent and volume of stimulated
rock significantly, he adds.
Heinson emphasizes that candidates
originally were completed more or less
uniformly along the well. They may have
had wider spacing between stages, but
still would be regarded as relatively modern
fracs. "We are not looking for problem
wells where we essentially would be completing a half-completed job," he says.
Instead, Sanchez wants to improve the
geometry of the actual frac wings. "We try
to get far-field proppant placement today,
as opposed to earlier frac jobs that typically
distributed proppant much more densely
toward the wellbore," Heinson says, adding
the result should be a greater extent of effectively propped rock volume.
Well mechanics are also important in
candidate selection. "Wells need to be in
good shape with no history that would
preclude re-entry," Heinson says.
Mechanics also come into play when
considering the most effective diversion
strategy. For its first five refractures,
Heinson says Sanchez combined chemical
diversion and mechanical balls. "We are
still learning the process and figuring out
which methods work best in each situation," he allows.
During and after the refrac, Heinson
says Sanchez is monitoring pressure in
offset wells to see where fractures are
growing. He says these wells may experience interference between the frac and
frac hits.
He says the company is monitoring
closely the newly refractured wells to
determine differences in production and
OCTOBER 2015 73



American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2015

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

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