Summary
Hydraulic fracturing with slickwater is a common practice in developing unconventional resources in North America. The proppant placement in the fractures largely determines the productivity of the well because it affects the conductivity of fractures. Despite the wide use of slickwater fracturing and the importance of proppant placement, the proppant transport is still not fully understood, and the efficiency of the proppant placement is mostly bound to the changes to proppant properties, friction reducers, and guar technology. Although the degradable fiber is currently used in some cases, it has not been well investigated. In this experimental study, we conducted a proppant transport experiment using different fluid compositions of fiber and guar gum in three types of proppant transport slot equipment. After the experiments, simulation was conducted with the commercial fracture software StimPlanTM (NSI Technologies 2020) to simulate and compare the fracture fluid performance with and without the fibers. The results indicate that using degradable fibers with or without the guar gum as a viscosifier can produce a fracture slurry applicable in both conventional and unconventional fracturing operations, helping proppant placement in the reservoir.
