A hydraulic fracturing method is disclosed that includes designing a fracture treatment including a fluid pumping schedule to fracture a subterranean formation according to a design model that accounts for cumulative filter cake thickness, including polymer concentrated at the fracture surfaces, to provide a propped fracture width effectively greater than the cumulative filter cake thickness, and injecting fluids through a wellbore into the formation essentially according to the fluid pumping sc...

This specification discloses a hydraulic fracturing process of forming and propping a vertical fracture in a subterranean formation. Propping material is scheduled into the fracturing fluid in an amount sufficient to fill the fracture to a predetermined height concomitantly with the forming of the fracture. The schedule provides for a high concentration of propping material in the fracturing fluid early in the fracturing treatment and decreasing concentrations as the fracture is extended into th...

In a process wherein a well is fractured using a plurality of solid particles as propping agent, the propping agent particles are color-coded so that if propping particles are subsequently produced out of one or more of the propped fractures, these produced propping particles, when recovered at the earth's surface, can, because of their color-coding, give an indication as to the nature of the problem in the fractured area.

A formation fracturing method with which to mitigate risk to hydrocarbon productivity includes pumping fracturing fluid, during at least part of a fracturing job time period, into a well to fracture a formation; generating signals, within the fracturing job time period, in response to at least one dimension of the fracture; and further pumping fracturing fluid, within the fracturing job time period, into the well in response to the generated signals. Further pumping includes controlling at least...

A borehole technique for in-situ determination of principal stresses operating in a plane normal to the borehole includes using a downhole jack to independently initiate three spaced apart fractures in a subterranean formation, measuring the breakdown pressure required to initiate the fractures and then using the measured breakdown pressures in two-dimensional axial transformation equations to compute the maximum and minimum stresses that are active in the normal plane. The technique is useful w...

Deviated wells, in particular, are hydraulically fractured at reduced rates and with higher viscosity fracturing fluids if the fracture design indicates during an initial test fracture that the instantaneous shut-in pressure, upon cessation of injection, exceeds a predetermined amount indicating high friction pressure losses in the near wellbore region of the fracture. Increasing the fracture fluid viscosity and reducing the fracture fluid rate of injection minimizes the creation of multiple fra...

A new process of fracture stimulating a carbonate reservoir in a subterranean formation to stimulate the production of hydrocarbon fluids from the formation is described. During the process, the composition and reactivity of the fracture stimulation fluid that is injected into the formation surrounding a wellbore is varied from a lower reactive fluid to a higher reactive fluid. The process is designed to stimulate the fracture starting from the tip of the fracture and progressing along the fract...

An improved method for fracturing oil wells is disclosed and claimed herein. In particular, the present invention involves the determination of the direction of fracture propagation, i.e., perpendicular to the minimum stress existing within a given formation and the alignment of perforations produced by a variety of perforating devices with the previously determined direction of fracture propagation. The methods disclosed and claimed herein will eliminate many problems encountered in the prior a...

During injection of fracture fluid into a subterranean formation, the bottomhole treating pressure at which the change in pressure is essentially zero is determined. This pressure is the maximum which should be attained for that formation during fracture and is useful for designing subsequent fracture treatments within the same subterranean formation.

Solutions for the propagation of a hydraulic fracture in a permeable elastic rock and driven by injection of a Newtonian fluid. Through scaling, the dependence of the solution on the problem parameters is reduced to a small number of dimensionless parameters.