Halliburton introduces MicroScout Plus Service

HOUSTON –– Halliburton Company introduced MicroScout Plus Service , an offering designed to take hydraulic fracturing, and microfracture stimulation, to the next level by reaching and effectively stimulating secondary microfractures too small to be propped using conventional frac sand. The enhanced sand suspension characteristics offered by the service offer deeper penetration into the formation and extended conductive complexity, aimed at increasing the productivity of stimulated reservoir volume over the long term.

Both natural and created microfactures are common in unconventional formations and can contribute strongly to production in low permeability formations. The challenge is that microfractures are often largely unstimulated by conventional stimulation proppants. Even placing small, 200-mesh sand is difficult due to low leakoff fluid velocities. To more effectively stimulate these secondary fracture networks, Halliburton developed MicroScout service in 2015. The service provides fine particulates, smaller than 200-mesh size, to prop and continue to hold fractures open in areas that normal proppant can't reach.

Coupled with MicroScout service, the MicroScout Plus service design offers a two-part system that delivers an additional microparticle product much smaller than the original MicroScout service into even smaller fissures. The particles are designed to flow where the stimulation fluid flows, and a large percentage remains suspended in the fluids at the conclusion of a fracturing operation. These particles are then able to leak off deeper into the reservoir, stimulating even more of the reservoir to enable the recovery of previously untapped resources.

Recently, MicroScout Plus service was deployed on a well in Permian basin to improve long term production versus offset wells in a customer's asset and decrease the high degree of entry friction and pressure dependent leakoff that was leading to difficult formation breakdowns and insufficient stimulation. The result was that the well treated with the MicroScout Plus Service produced 20% more than comparable offset wells in the first 70 days of production.