Cherry River

The multimedia exhibition Cherry River, Where the Rivers Mix was presented to audiences in August 2018 at the Missouri Headwaters State Park in Three Forks, Montana. Long before the European invasion across the Atlantic, the headwaters, or the confluence of three forks of the Missouri River, was a crossroads for Northern Plains Indians. The place-based project, Cherry River, created by artist Mary Ellen Strom and Native American researcher Shane Doyle, was produced by Mountain Time Arts, a collaborative arts and culture organization in southwestern Montana. In an effort to analyze the site, Mountain Time Arts convened a diverse group of participants. Their research question became, What does it take to change the name of a river? After six months of research, the project centered on the act of changing the name of the East Gallatin River back to the Indigenous Crow name Cherry River. The name Cherry River honors and describes the numerous chokecherry trees growing on the river’s banks that provide sustenance for wildlife and venerates Indigenous history, the ecology of running water, and riparian systems in the Northwest. The rise of interest in the rights of Indigenous people in North America aligns with many of Okwui Enwezor’s groundbreaking initiatives around the world. This assemblage of images, poetry, and first-person narratives is an example of the kind of practice in dialogue with the legacy of Enwezor’s decolonial actions and innovative use of curatorial strategies in several groundbreaking exhibitions to confront the “complex predicaments of contemporary art in a time of profound historical change and global transformation.” While Enwezor was neither an explicit source of inspiration nor invoked for the Cherry River project, the futures of Enwezor are palpable in this anticolonial project restoring the past to reimagine the present.

Infill Well Completion Technologies Mitigate Well Interference and Optimize Production on Multiwell Pad

Increased drilling of infill wells in the Bakken has led to growing concern over the effects of frac or fracture hits between parent and infill wells. Fracture hits can cause decreased production in a parent well, as well as other negative effects such as wellbore sanding, casing damage, and reduced production performance from the infill well. An operator had an objective to maximize production of infill wells and decrease the frequency and severity of frac hits to parent wells. The goal was to maintain production of the parent wells and avoid sanding, which had the potential to cause cleanouts. Infill well completion technologies were successfully implemented on multiwell pads in Mountrail County, Williston basin, to minimize parent-child well interference or negative frac hits on parent wells for optimized production. Four infill (child) wells were landed in the Three Forks formation directly below a group of six parent wells landed in the Middle Bakken. The infill well completion technologies used in this project to mitigate frac hits included far-field diverter, near-wellbore diverter, and real-time pressure monitoring. The far-field diverter design includes a blend of multimodal particles to bridge the fracture tip, preventing excessive fracture length and height growth. The near-wellbore diverter consists of a proprietary blend of degradable particles with a tetra modal size distribution and fibers used to achieve sequential stimulation of perforated clusters to maximize wellbore coverage. Hydraulic fracture modeling with a unique advanced particle transport model was used to predict the impact of the far-field diverter design on fracture geometry. Real-time pressure monitoring allowed acquisition of parent well pressure data to identify pressure communication or lack of communication and implement mitigation and contingency procedures as necessary. Real-time pressure monitoring was also used to optimize and validate the far-field diversion design during the job execution. The parent well monitored was 800 ft away from the closest infill well and at high risk for frac hits due to both the proximity to the infill well and depletion. In the early stages of the infill well stimulation, an increase in pressure up to 600 psi was observed in the parent well. The far-field diverter design was modified to combat the observed frac hit, after which a noticeable drop in both frequency and magnitude of frac hits was observed on the parent well. This is the first time the far-field diverter design optimization process was done in real time. After the infill wells stimulation treatment, production results showed a positive uplift in oil production for all parent wells at an average of 118%. Also, only two out of seven parent wells required a full cleanout, resulting in savings in well cleanup costs. Infill well production data was compared with the closest parent well landed in the same formation (Three Forks). At about a year, the best infill well production was only 10% less than the parent well with similar completion design and the average infill well production approximately 18% less than the parent well. Considering the depletion surrounding the infill wells, production performance exceeded expectations.