THE APPLICATION OF PRESSURE HISTORY MATCHING, RADIOACTIVE TRACERS AND TEMPERATURE LOGS TO ANALYZE HYDRAULIC FRACTURE TREATMENTS IN THE QUEEN SAND FORMATION, SOUTHEASTERN NEW MEXICO
Oduye Oluwafemi O. and Engler Thomas W.
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
The Queen Sand of southeastern New Mexico is characterized as a sequence of laminated sandstones and shale, bounded by anhydrite seals. Good permeability is evident but still the Queen requires fracture stimulation to be successful. The case presented in this study is an injection well from Chaves County in southeastern New Mexico. For this stimulation study, surface treating pressure data from a fracture treatment was history-matched with a pseudo 3D fracture simulator. Fracture characteristics such as height and fluid distributions from the pressure match were compared with that from the radioactive and temperature tracers to analyze the fracture treatment in this formation. An additional complication is the existence of a compressible, friable sand bed, resulting in difficulties in hydraulic fracture effectiveness. Two fracture designs are compared: a vertical fracture with high proppant concentration in a restricted interval, and a horizontal fracture due to the shallow depth and high frac gradient.