Paper: Pipelining, Viscous Fingering Prop Fracture Technique Finds Wide Success In Permian and Delaware Basins

During the past two and a half years, a new fracturing technique has been developed to selectively place proppant across a well's producing interval. The new technique, termed "pipelining," has been employed in hundreds of wells in the Permian and Delaware basins. This technique utilizes high differential viscosity to selectively place high concentrations of proppant across the well's producing zone. This technique involves specialized design and iterative modeling procedures. In the paper, we will discuss the ongoing improvement of the "pipeline" fracture design and present numerous case histories of various sand members of the Delaware formation throughout Southeastern New Mexico as well as other producing horizons in the Permian Basin. The authors feel that the "pipeline" fracture technique, combined with intense quality control and aggressive forced closure, greatly enhances the ability to selectively place proppant in the pay zone and allows for highly conductive propped fractures for much greater lengths than were heretofore felt possible.