Paper: Foam Fracturing Theories, Procedures Results

For the past several years, foam has been used in many treatments as a fracturing fluid. Although many different types of reservoirs have been stimulated with foam, the primary zones of interest in Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia have been the Berea Sandstone and the Devonian Shales. Due to the nature of these formations, i.e. low permeability, low bottom-hole pressure and water sensitivity, foam fracturing has been a successful technique. This paper presents the basic background theory of foam and presents several basic treatment designs which have been used successfully in the Devonian Shales and Berea Sandstone. Production histories for up to two years on a number of wells fractured with foam are compared to production histories of offset wells which were conventionally fractured with gelled water. In all the side-by-side comparisons, foam fracturing was found to give production results either as good as, or better than, conventional fracturing with gelled water.