Mike Moody, BJ Services Co., Shawn Lackey, Lackey Oil & Gas Operating
Wolfcamp producers in Howard County, Texas have to be fracture stimulated to be economical. However, the low frac gradient and bottomhole reservoir pressures make formation closure slow and proppant retention in the created fracture during initial production difficult. This has led to many of the wells requiring wellbore cleanouts and in some cases multiple cleanouts. Various methods are available to overcome this problem. Methods of proppant flowback control vary from materials added to a proppant pack to provide physical stability, forced closure techniques, tail-in with curable resin coated proppants, etc. The most extensively used method in most areas of West Texas is the tail-in with curable resin coated proppant. Resin coated proppants consist of a substrate of sand or ceramic particle coated with multi-layers of phenolic and other specialty resins. These resins provide grain to grain bonding and additional particle strength. Presented are case histories of Wolfcamp producers fracture treated using 20/40 Mesh, White Sand and using a tail-in of curable resin coated sand comprising 15% of total proppant pumped. The case histories show that use of a resin coated proppant added an additional $25000 to $30000 to treatment costs, however, a single wellbore cleanout of sand costs $24000 to $27000. Making the cost of running a resin coated proppant tail-in