Arthur S. Metcalf and Juan A. Coronado Baker Hughes
The "Wolfberry" play is named after the two main productive formations, the low-permeability Wolfcamp and Spraberry, and is a very large part of the everyday business in the Permian Basin. Activity in the Wolfberry has recently increased, spurred by the current relatively strong oil prices. However, the economic foundation of these producing wells is their stimulation and the management of completion costs. All of these wells require multistage fracture treatments to achieve economic production and therefore significant effort has been given to continuous improvement in efficiently completing and fracturing Wolfberry wells. To illustrate the evolution of the optimization process, a retrospective of the changes implemented in fracturing Wolfberry wells over the past 10 years in several counties in the Permian Basin is presented. This paper addresses in particular, choices involved in optimizing stimulation stages (including perforation schemes), treatment fluids and proppants, to maximize net present value contribution of the hydraulic fracturing treatments.