Hydraulic fracture monitoring and optimization in unconventional completions using a high-resolution engineered fibre-optic Distributed Acoustic Sensor

Abstract

Understanding fracture geometry and estimating stimulated rock volume (SRV) is the goal of operators in unconventional reservoirs. The industry has long been challenged with getting a good understanding of how wells and completions interact with each other. One of the biggest challenges is how to get a quantitative measure of the extent of fractures. Historically, companies have used many different technologies to better understand their completions. Tilt meters, microseismic geophone arrays, chemical tracers and pressure sensors are just some of the conventional technologies that have been used with a limited coverage to monitor the changes in the reservoir during hydraulic fracturing.