Geomechanical Applications in Deepwater Fracpacks and Associated Productivity Impact

Deepwater fracpacks continue to evolve in the Miocene and Paleogene trends in Gulf of Mexico and deliver best in class skins and reliability in these high-rate high margin reservoirs. As operators move towards maximizing production in existing fields that have been produced over the past several decades, depletion has concurrently evolved as the most frequent issue that challenges drilling, cementing, perforating, and fracturing operations. The overall impact of higher overbalance operations in these depleted intervals has placed Geomechanical impacts on completions and well productivity at the forefront. The paper will examine recent advances in Geomechanical applications in high permeability formations, specifically in a fracturing context. This paper will expand upon a simple and innovative method for the determination of maximum horizontal stresses with calibrated minifrac data that will have an impact on fracturing and proppant placement. Use of pore pressure ranges to correlate fracture initiation and breakdown pressures will also be demonstrated as a valuable aid to design surface equipment pressure limits to enable fracturing. Applying depletion related Geomechanical concepts to fracpacks has resulted in understanding of high treating pressures, bring successful investigations on trouble fracturing treatments to closure, and capture lessons to avoid problems on future wells. A robust workflow process has also been developed to anticipate these potential challenges and appropriate mitigations such as higher ratings for surface equipment, differential packer ratings and completion fluid weight to gain higher margins and were incorporated to enable fracture placement as designed. This will be discussed in the context of a few actual case histories from the Gulf of Mexico. The effect of depletion and well bore trajectory on fracture placement will also be discussed.