Hydraulic fracturing system

Abstract

A method is given for fracturing a formation, in particular far-field in a tight formation, in which at least a portion of the proppant is crushable in situ at some point during pumping, during fracture closure, or at higher stresses experienced later during fracture closure. The closure stress or hydrostatic stress is estimated, then a proppant is selected that is at least partially crushable at that closure stress, and then the fracturing treatment is performed with at least a portion of the total proppant being the selected crushable proppant.

Having thus described our invention, we claim: 
     
         1 . A method of hydraulic fracturing a subterranean formation penetrated by a wellbore comprising (a) estimating the closure stress in a fracture, (b) selecting a crushable proppant that produces more than about 20 percent fines in a crush test using that closure stress, and (c) injecting a slurry of the proppant in a carrier fluid into the formation. 
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant is in the form of spheres, plates, disks, rods, cylinders, platelets, flakes, sheets, scales, husks, chips, shells, lumps and mixtures thereof. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant comprises particles of at least two different shapes that have at least two different crush strengths. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant comprises particles of at least two different materials that have at least two different crush strengths. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant is selected from the group consisting of ceramic hollow spheres, glass or ceramic microspheres and microballoons, ceno spheres, plerospheres and combinations thereof. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant comprises materials with closed porosity. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 6  wherein the materials with closed porosity, are selected from the group consisting of glass and ceramics, rocks and minerals, polymers and plastics, metals and alloys, composite materials, biomaterials and combinations thereof. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 6  wherein the materials with closed porosity have fibrous, arch/cellular, mesh, mesh/cellular, honeycomb, bubble, sponge-like or foam structures and combinations thereof. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant comprises finer material that has been formed into larger particles by agglomeration or binding. 
     
     
         10 . The method  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant is coated. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant comprises from 10 to 100% of the total solids in the slurry. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant produces more than 15 percent fines in a crush test using the closure stress of the formation. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crushable proppant produces more than 10 percent fines in a crush test using the closure stress of the formation. 
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 1  wherein step (c) is followed by injection of a slurry in which the proppant is not crushable. 
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 14  where a cycle of alternating proppant types is repeated a plurality of times. 
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 14  wherein the crushable proppant generates less than about 6 to about 20 percent fines in a crush test using the closure stress of the formation 
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 1  wherein a portion of the crushable proppant is crushed during step (c). 
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 1  wherein a portion of the crushable proppant is crushed when the fracture closes after step (c). 
     
     
         19 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the formation has a permeability of less than about 001 mD and the proppant loading is less than about 4.88 kg/m 2 . 
     
     
         20 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the proppant consists of at least 10 weight percent of mica or cenospheres or mixtures thereof. 
     
     
         21 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the proppant is continuously added to a carrier fluid injected into the formation. 
     
     
         22 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the crush strength of the material is chosen so that at least a portion of the crush occurs after initial cleanup of the well. 
     
     
         23 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the surface treating pressures are reduced relative to injecting conventional proppant at similar proppant concentrations. 
     
     
         24 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the settling velocity is less than that of 150 micron sand. 
     
     
         25 . A method of hydraulic fracturing a subterranean formation penetrated by a wellbore comprising (a) estimating the hydraulic pressure to which materials are exposed during pumping, (b) selecting a crushable proppant that produces more than about 20 percent fines in a crush test using that hydraulic pressure, and (c) injecting a slurry of the proppant in a carrier fluid into the formation. 
     
     
         26 . The method of  claim 25  wherein the hydrostatic pressure is changed during the step of injecting to control crushing of the crushable proppant material. 
     
     
         27 . The method of  claim 26  wherein the rate of injection is increased.