Course Content

Effective hydraulic fracture stimulation is critical for shale development, and microseismic is the only technology able to map the growth of these hydraulic fracture networks. Since the advent of commercial mapping in the Barnett Shale in 2000, microseismic has been used to investigate hydraulic fracture treatments around the globe. The presentation will describe how microseismic can be used to improve the stimulation to cover just the intended reservoir depth interval without fracturing out of zone, understand the primary fracture orientation to optimize the well orientation, define the optimum spacing between stages and detect unexpected fracture growth such as fault activation. More fundamentally, however, microseismic images of complex fracture networks have fundamentally changed the conceptual view of hydraulic fractures from simple, planar fractures to intersecting fracture networks in various directions. The recent development of complex fracture models, which implicitly simulate both the geomechanics and mass balance of the injected fluid volume, offer promise to estimate the effective propped volume of the fracture network.

Structure of the E-Symposium

Each e-symposium consists of one-hour live e-symposium, along with material for one full day of independent study. The live portion will be followed by a full day of independent study (not a live event). The one-hour live e-symposium can be accessed from any computer anywhere in the world using a high-speed internet connection. After the event is over, you will receive via email information about accessing the asynchronous segment (not live) which consists of your independent study materials, to be accessed and studied at any time. You will be able to email responses to the readings, along with your study question answers for CEU credit (if you sign up for the extended package).