Optimal fracture stimulation of a moderate-permeability reservoir―Kuparuk River Unit, Alaska

Sixty-five percent of the reserves of the Kuparuk River field, the second-largest producing oil field in the U.S., is contained in a 20- to 80-md-permeability sandstone. This paper provides details of stimulation design advances made over the past 3 years in this formation. The design steps for optimizing fracture treatments in a moderate-permeability formation require primary emphasis on fracture conductivity rather than on treatment size or fracture length. This philosophy was used for the 140 new wells documented in this paper. Treatment size was gradually increased once a commensurate increase in fracture conductivity was obtained. Applying the new design to the refracturing of 88 producing wells in the field resulted in an incremental 40,000 BOPD, a significant portion of the field's 300,000 BOPD