Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
January 2014

Vol. 19, No. 2 Week of January 12, 2014

Halcon’s approach to best frack methods

Houston-based independent finds NDIC website an excellent resource for optimizing reservoir recoveries in its Williston Basin wells

Mike Ellerd

Petroleum News Bakken

Halcon Resources made its entry into the Williston Basin in August of 2012 with the acquisition of G3 Resources’ assets followed by the acquisition of some Petro-Hunt assets in December 2012. Since then, the Houston-based independent has risen to the No. 12 spot among North Dakota’s top oil producers in October according to Department of Mineral Resources’ data for operated, non-confidential wells averaging more than 30,000 barrels per day.

Halcon’s success, according to Jon Wright, Halcon’s vice president for Bakken/Three Forks operations, is due in large part to a completion optimization program that is underpinned by comprehensive reservoir modeling studies. These studies include petrophysical and geochemical properties, frack modeling, and production type matching. With that understanding, Halcon has significantly improved well results in 2013. One of the first steps was to transition away from sliding sleeves and move exclusively to perf-and-plug in its fracking operations in the basin.

“And you may ask yourself why did you go that route?” Wright asked rhetorically in a recent interview with Petroleum News Bakken. “Well, by changing that completion technique to plug-and-perf, it provided an infinite number of solutions with regard to cluster design. And that’s important when we think about what we’re trying to do. The frack geometry we’re trying to create.” In addition, Wright said it also removed the potential failure mechanisms associated with sliding sleeves.

Wright said Halcon’s ultimate goal is increasing recovery factors, and optimizing reservoir stimulation to improve access to the reservoir is how to achieve that. One way to optimize stimulation is to create a more complex fracture network, he said. So with that focus, and through its reservoir and frack modeling, Wright said Halcon has a better idea how the frack stimulation is accessing the reservoir. Concurrently, he said, other parameters are being evaluated for optimizing stimulations, such as proppant type.

Shift to slickwater

Along those lines, another major change Halcon has made in its frack design is a move away from cross-linked gels to slickwater for its fracking fluid.

Wright said one of the first things Halcon did when it entered the Williston Basin was to look at the wealth of data available on the North Dakota Industrial Commission, NDIC, website maintained by the Department of Mineral Resources to learn how other companies were operating in the basin and what was successful and what wasn’t. In particular, Wright said, Halcon looked at wells that Liberty Resources had completed using slickwater in Williams County.

“When we started operations in the Bakken, one of our first steps was to evaluate our competitor activity and really understand what was working and what wasn’t,” Wright told Petroleum News Bakken. “Analysis of information through the NDIC website provided significant detail to evaluate offset performance, in addition to our non-op information in some of the slickwater wells that Liberty Resources had completed.”

This analysis, Wright said, gave the company the confidence that slickwater had a high probability of success in one of Halcon’s core areas in Williams County. With that, Halcon began a migration away from gels and now uses slickwater exclusively in its Williams County operations.

Fort Berthold slickwater tests

Following the successes of slickwater in Williams County, Halcon has been testing this design in its Fort Berthold area. Wright said Halcon has tested slickwater in two wells in its south Fort Berthold area, and after 60 days of production, he said those two wells had an average daily production that was 58 percent higher than the average of all other company-operated Bakken wells put online in that area in 2013.

Halcon did a third slickwater well in its north Fort Berthold area, and Wright said that well came online with a daily production that was 20 percent higher than all of the company’s new wells in that area in 2013.

“So we’re very encouraged on the early time results on those wells. On the first two wells we’re over 120 days of production now and we’re still seeing the outperformance,” Wright said. “We’re going to continue to pilot slickwater completions on the reservation.”

Other stimulation parameters

Halcon has been using ceramic proppants in most of its fracks but is testing various types of both ceramic and non-ceramic proppants, particularly in its Williams County area. Wright said he is not convinced that ceramic proppant is ideal in every area, stressing that each area of the basin is different and that one solution to maximizing reservoir recoveries may not fit all areas.

But there is far more to successfully stimulating a reservoir than just proppant, according to Wright. “So when we talk about frack, we’re looking at a number of components to include fluid type, gel loading, stage density, cluster design, pounds of proppant per stage — there’s a myriad of variables that we look at and try to optimize so that we can generate our highest rate of return.”

NDIC website

Wright attributes some of Halcon’s success in the basin to the data the company was able evaluate from the NDIC’s website. “As you’re aware, the NDIC website is one of the best resources for our industry that I’ve come across in a number of states. I think our industry, especially working in the Bakken, is fortunate to have a data warehouse there that’s available.”

Using the data available on the NDIC website, Halcon has built its own internal database that includes literally all of the Bakken petroleum system wells that have been drilled in North Dakota. “Our reservoir team here in Denver has developed a database, and they update it monthly, for every Bakken well drilled in North Dakota. We have an internal EUR (estimated ultimate recovery) estimate for every well in North Dakota, and that allows us to better evaluate the well performance by operator, by area.”

“You can read about your peer’s activities through their presentations, press releases, etcetera,” Wright continued, “but you can really get the details of what actually occurred — how the results are really playing out — through the website.”






Petroleum News - Phone: 1-907 522-9469 - Fax: 1-907 522-9583
[email protected] --- http://www.petroleumnews.com ---
S U B S C R I B E

Copyright Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA)©2013 All rights reserved. The content of this article and web site may not be copied, replaced, distributed, published, displayed or transferred in any form or by any means except with the prior written permission of Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA). Copyright infringement is a violation of federal law subject to criminal and civil penalties.