Minimizing Parent-Child Effect in the Anadarko Basin Through Parent Recharges

Abstract

Recharging parents has been used as a technique in the Anadarko Basin to mitigate the parent-child effect since 2018. Usually, parent wells either don't return to their pre-infill rate or recover slowly after frac hits. On the other hand, the performance of the child directly adjacent to the parent can be negatively impacted by the presence of the parent and underperform other infills. Recharging a parent prior to completing the children not only can help the parent well recover to its pre-infill rate faster but also can help minimize the parent-child effect and improve the performance of the children, specifically direct offsets. Over time our recharge operations and design parameters have evolved significantly to increase the effectiveness and improve economics of the program. Many trials were performed to identify key design parameters that impact parent recovery post frac-hit. In addition, a robust analysis was done to quantify the effect of recharges on direct offsets. This paper presents several case studies of successful and unsuccessful parent recharges in the Anadarko Basin. We will review candidate selection criterion and discuss key parameters that optimize the recharge program to maximize the effectiveness on parent recovery and minimize the parent effect on the parent adjacent child wells. The key parameters that will be discussed are recharge volume, pump rate, magnitude of pressure depletion, distance between the parent and the direct offset, and completion design.