Paper: ULTRA-LIGHTWEIGHT PROPPANT RESURRECTS ABANDONED DELAWARE PRODUCER

The Delaware sand is a common oil producing formation in the Permian Basin. It is a low permeability sandstone that requires proppant fracture treatments in order to be economically viable. Typically these treatments consist of crosslinked water based fluids with polymer loadings of approximately 30 pounds per one thousand gallons and carry from 25,000 to over 200,000 pounds of 20/40 mesh sand. This is a case history about one Delaware producer originally completed in November of 1992 with an initial fracture treatment similar in fashion to those described above, re-stimulated in November of 1996, but with a larger quantity of proppant and then subsequently temporarily abandoned in June of 2000. The details of a third propped fracture treatment, using an ultra-lightweight proppant at a fraction of the quantities previously used and the production response that resulted is the basis for this paper.