Publications

Hydraulic fracturing is essentially a fracture-generating technique performed through injecting fluid into formation and keeping the created fractures open using high conductivity material called proppant. The establishment of this high permeability channel increases the productivity of the well. In lower permeability sand like Well X (9.6 mD), transport of fracturing material is more important to obtain a useful hydraulic fracture. This paper investigates the effect of different fracturing fluids, proppant, proppant size and injection rate on hydraulic fracturing: • Fracturing fluids: YF130.1HTD and YF125.1HTD, • Proppants: Brady sand, C-Lite Ceramic, and Acfrac CR, • Proppant size: 12/20, 16/30 and 20/40 • Injection rate: 10 bpm, 20 bpm and 25 bpm. The simulation has shown that even though YF130.1HTD, C-Lite 12/18 and 25 bpm produces the smallest fracture size it yields the highest dimensionless fracture conductivity (FCD). Furthermore, high pumping rate and proppant concentration improve the fracture parameters, whereas larger pumping stages tend to produce the reverse. The best design produced a FCD of 11.2 and fracture length of 198.9 ft.