Assign your company's most challenging shale and tight gas/oil fracturing-design, execution-oversight, and post-fracturing-evaluation projects — in the Permian Basin, Vaca Muerta, or anywhere else around the world — to A&A, and let the high-level, seasoned consultants of the A&A Consulting Team find the most appropriate, cost-effective solutions for you.

 

Avasthi & Associates, Inc. (A&A) is an independent petroleum engineering and geoscience consulting firm. A&A does not sell fracturing equipment, proppant, chemicals, or pumping/completion services — our only business is expert technical consulting, which means our fracturing-design review, execution-oversight, and optimization recommendations are never influenced by a stake in the service company or equipment being used.

The A&A Consulting Team of high-level, seasoned consultants — geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, geochemists, reservoir engineering and simulation experts, and geomechanics and fracturing-stimulation specialists — is available to help A&A clients, around the world, with hydraulic fracturing design, execution oversight, and post-fracturing evaluation for their shale and tight gas/oil resources.

 

Related A&A Service: For A&A's broader unconventional/shale resources evaluation, development, and optimization services — including play and resource assessment, petrophysics and geomechanics, horizontal well and pad development planning, and type-curve/EUR forecasting — please see A&A's Unconventional/Shale Resources Development (URD) Consulting page.

 

A&A's Global Fracturing Experience

A&A consultants have provided fracturing design, implementation, and post-fracturing analysis for shale and tight gas/oil resources development projects in the United States — including the Permian Basin — as well as in Argentina (Vaca Muerta), Australia, Angola, Nigeria, Indonesia, Canada, the Arabian/Persian Gulf, and the North Sea. These stimulation projects have included many shale gas and oil (gas and oil trapped within shale) as well as tight gas and oil (gas and oil trapped in low-permeability reservoir rock, as distinct from shale, where the source rock itself is the reservoir) formations. Shale formations treated have included the Barnett, Bakken, Eagle Ford, Mancos, Niobrara, and Haynesville shales in the United States, and the Tournaisian shale in Australia — in addition to the Permian Basin and Vaca Muerta formations discussed below. Many of these fracturing treatments were in wells drilled horizontally into the target shale, with laterals extending as much as 10,000 ft (approximately 3,000 m) into the reservoir — and lateral lengths across the industry have continued to grow since then, with many operators now regularly drilling laterals exceeding 10,000–15,000 ft, and several record wells extending past 20,000 ft (nearly 4 miles). A&A's fracturing design and post-fracturing analysis expertise scales to these longer laterals as readily as to shorter laterals.

The Permian Basin: Multi-Bench, Stacked-Pay Fracturing

The Permian Basin — spanning roughly 86,000 square miles across 52 counties in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico — is the largest and most active shale/tight oil and gas play in the United States. It divides into the Midland Basin, the Delaware Basin, and the Central Basin Platform that separates them, each with its own stacked producing formations: the Wolfcamp and Spraberry in the Midland Basin, and the Wolfcamp, Bone Spring, and Avalon shale in the Delaware Basin, among others.

Fracturing design and execution in the Permian Basin is shaped by its multi-bench, stacked-pay geology — operators routinely target several stratigraphic benches from the same pad, requiring careful attention to:

•     Well spacing and stacking across multiple benches, to manage parent-child interference and frac-hit risk between offset wells

•     Cluster spacing, stage count, and perforation design, tailored to each bench's stress profile and completion history

•     Proppant type and loading intensity, and fluid-system selection, tuned to the specific target bench

•     Development sequencing across benches — determining which zones to complete first, and how to stagger offset-well timing to minimize interference

Vaca Muerta: Fracturing in Argentina's Neuquén Basin

Vaca Muerta, in Argentina's Neuquén Basin (Patagonia), is one of the largest shale resources outside North America — the formation, together with the underlying Los Molles formation, extends over roughly 30,000 km², with the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimating approximately 16.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 308 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas across the play. Development has concentrated in oil-focused areas such as Loma Campana, and gas-focused areas including La Amarga Chica and Bandurria Sur, with growing pipeline and export infrastructure — including the Néstor Kirchner Gas Pipeline and the Vaca Muerta Sur oil pipeline and export terminal — steadily expanding the play's takeaway capacity and supporting increased drilling and fracturing activity.

Vaca Muerta's fracturing programs face many of the same remote-logistics challenges A&A has encountered on other international projects — pumping-services capability, downhole-tool availability, proppant and water logistics, and workforce mobilization, all in a Patagonian operating environment considerably more remote than the established service infrastructure of the Permian Basin. As pad-scale, multi-well “factory” development has expanded across Vaca Muerta, disciplined fracturing-fleet scheduling and service-company oversight have become just as important to project economics as the fracturing design itself — precisely the areas where A&A's independent oversight adds the most value.

Hydraulic Fracturing Design and Well Completion

Horizontal wells completed in shale and tight formations can vary widely in initial production rates, but commonly have an initial production of 5 to 40 MMCFD, stabilizing at about one-third of that rate. An important part of design in these projects is the isolation of the lateral, so that multiple unique fractures can be generated along its length. A&A's fracturing-design services include, but are not limited to:

•     Completion architecture selection — plug-and-perf versus sliding-sleeve systems — and cluster-spacing and stage-count optimization

•     Diagnostic fracture injection test (DFIT) design and interpretation, for closure-pressure and in-situ stress estimation

•     Microseismic and fiber-optic (DAS/DTS) monitoring-program design, for frac-geometry mapping and offset-well frac-hit/interference diagnosis

•     Proppant type, size, and loading-schedule selection, and fracturing-fluid system design (slickwater, hybrid, and crosslinked-gel systems)

•     Refracturing/restimulation candidate screening and design, for older wells with remaining unstimulated reservoir contact

Fracturing Logistics and Field Execution

Another important factor in the drilling and completion design for such fracturing treatments is consideration of pumping-services capabilities, downhole-tool capabilities, and material availability. Often the logistics of assembling the required elements in a remote area are the limiting factors in such projects. These fracturing projects require experienced personnel — such as the high-level, seasoned consultants of the A&A Consulting Team — to make the correct decisions so that all the pieces complement each other and are cost-effective.

Independent Fracturing-Service Oversight

To ensure that A&A clients are getting the hydraulic fractures they are paying the fracturing service companies for, the high-level, seasoned consultants of the A&A Consulting Team — with extensive expertise in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal-well technologies — are available to help A&A clients:

1. Analyze the fracturing proposals (including the proposed design of fractures) received by A&A clients from the service companies

2. Analyze the scope of fracturing fieldwork proposed by the service companies

3. Recommend changes to the fracturing-treatment proposals of the service companies, to meet A&A clients' project objectives

4. Conduct the necessary post-fracturing analysis to determine whether the fracturing treatment achieved the project objectives for which the A&A client paid the service companies

5. Make recommendations to A&A clients that would help reduce their costs of future fracturing treatments, with the objective of project optimization and profitability

Software and Technical Tools

The high-level, seasoned consultants of the A&A Consulting Team are expert users of industry-standard software and technical tools for state-of-the-art fracturing design, execution oversight, and post-fracturing evaluation, including:

•     StimPlan, GOHFER, MFrac: for hydraulic fracture design and geometry modeling

•     Kinetix, Petrel: for integrated completion design and stimulation planning

•     Microseismic-processing and fiber-optic (DAS/DTS) interpretation software: for frac-geometry mapping and interference diagnosis

•     Python, MATLAB: for DFIT interpretation, post-fracturing data analysis, and automation workflows

What A&A Delivers

A shale fracturing consulting engagement with the A&A Consulting Team is built around the practical decisions your company needs to make, including, but not limited to:

•     An independent, technically sound fracturing design — or an independent review of a service company's proposed design

•     Post-fracturing analysis, confirming whether project objectives were achieved

•     Specific, cost-reduction recommendations for future fracturing treatments

•     High-quality final reports and executive presentations

Frequently Asked Questions

How is A&A's fracturing consulting different from hiring a fracturing service company directly?

A&A does not perform fracturing fieldwork or sell fracturing equipment, proppant, or chemicals — we are the independent technical reviewer, to confirm that what a service company proposes, and what it actually pumps in the field, matches your project's objectives and what you are paying for.

Does A&A have direct experience in the Permian Basin and Vaca Muerta?

Yes. A&A's fracturing consultants have direct project experience across major U.S. shale plays, including the Permian Basin, and in Vaca Muerta (Argentina), in addition to shale and tight gas/oil projects in Australia, Angola, Nigeria, Indonesia, Canada, the Arabian/Persian Gulf, and the North Sea.

Can A&A review a fracturing proposal we've already received from a service company, before we commit to it?

Yes. Reviewing and recommending changes to service-company fracturing proposals — before fieldwork begins — is one of A&A's core fracturing-consulting services, alongside post-fracturing evaluation.

What makes fracturing logistics especially challenging in Vaca Muerta?

Vaca Muerta's Patagonian operating environment is considerably more remote than the well-established service infrastructure of the Permian Basin, so pumping-services capability, downhole-tool availability, proppant and water logistics, and workforce mobilization all require more careful advance planning — an area where A&A's international remote-logistics experience is directly applicable.

Does A&A sell fracturing equipment, proppant, or chemicals?

No. A&A is an independent consulting firm and does not sell equipment, proppant, chemicals, or pumping/completion services, so our fracturing-design and oversight recommendations are never influenced by a stake in any particular vendor or service company.

 

To put the high-level, seasoned consultants of the A&A Consulting Team to work on your company's challenging shale and tight gas/oil fracturing projects — in the Permian Basin, Vaca Muerta, or anywhere else around the world — please contact us.