Gazprom Neft Will Test the First Domestic Hydraulic Fracturing Fleet
Gazprom Neft is actively involved in the development of domestic hydraulic fracturing technologies that take into account the specifics of its assets with hard-to-recover reserves, primarily the Bazhenov formation.
Gazprom Neft and MeKaMineft will test the first Russian hydraulic fracturing fleet at the company’s fields in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug (KhMAO). The agreement between the companies was signed at the Industrial and Energy Forum in Tyumen, Gazprom Neft announced on September 22, 2022.
The creation of a domestic hydraulic fracturing fleet is part of the program of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation for import substitution. Gazprom Neft is the industry partner of the project.
The hydraulic fracturing fleet complex consists of mobile pumping units for pumping special fluids into wells, command and control stations, a field laboratory and other specialized equipment. The MIT Corporation (part of Roscosmos), which developed the complex, reported that the prototype of the Russian hydraulic fracturing fleet includes 12 units, each of which is placed on its own chassis. The complex includes a hydration unit, a liquid heating unit, a pumping unit, a mixing unit, a tank transport machine, a manifold machine, a bulk materials supply machine, a chemical additive machine and a control machine.
A pilot sample of the hydraulic fracturing fleet was presented in November 2021 at the Federal Research and Production Center Titan-Barrikada (part of Roscosmos), at the same time an act was signed on the completion of the manufacturing stage of the complex. Bench tests of the pilot hydraulic fracturing fleet are scheduled for 2022 at the test site of the Federal Research and Production Center Titan-Barrikada. Gazprom Neft announced that tests of the domestic hydraulic fracturing fleet will take place in 2023.
Earlier, the company announced testing of the hydraulic fracturing fleet in 2023 at the Yuzhno-Priobskoye field, a key asset of its subsidiary Gazpromneft-Khantos.
Hydraulic fracturing is the main method for extracting oil from hard-to-recover reserves or in fields with high depletion of reserves. Fluid is pumped into a drilled well at a depth of 2-3 km under high pressure, which makes it possible to create an extensive network of fractures even in super-dense rocks and increase the flow of oil into the well. To prevent these cracks from closing later, they are filled with a proppant, which is usually proppant: ceramic granules or river sand. Also, during the hydraulic fracturing process, other chemical components are used, for example, thickeners, which help to transfer the proppant (proppant) to the required zones of the wells.
V. Yakovlev, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Gazprom Neft, noted that hydraulic fracturing technology for oil companies is one of the key technologies in the development of hard-to-recover reserves (HTR), it is used in almost 80% of wells to obtain commercial oil production. Gazprom Neft is actively participating in the project and is ready to conduct tests at its fields in order to confirm the operational characteristics of the equipment and prepare it for commercial production. V. Yakovlev previously estimated the need for the Russian oil and gas industry in 135-140 hydraulic fracturing fleets, incl. Gazprom Neft – 20% of the industry indicator. V. Yakovlev estimated the volume of required production at 10 hydraulic fracturing fleets per year.
It should be noted that Gazprom Neft is actively involved in the development of domestic hydraulic fracturing technologies that take into account the specifics of its assets with hard-to-recover reserves, primarily the Bazhenov formation. In addition to participating in the project to create a domestic hydraulic fracturing fleet, the company has created its own hydraulic fracturing simulator.
At the end of August 2022, Gazprom Neft and ECONO-TECH entered into an agreement to develop the production of guar gum used as a thickener in hydraulic fracturing. Guar gum will be produced at the ECONO-TECH plant in Nizhnevartovsk (Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug), and Gazprom Neft’s fields in Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug will be the site for the first tests of Russian-made guar gum. The initial production capacity will be about 6 thousand tons/year, with the total capacity of the guar market for hydraulic fracturing in Russia being 25-30 thousand tons/year, and in the future a full cycle of guar gum production will be formed – from cultivation to processing.
The need for domestic solutions for hydraulic fracturing operations is high for the company. For example, in the Gazprom Neft-Khantos perimeter, almost 100% of wells are now commissioned with hydraulic fracturing immediately after drilling, and some wells are re-fractured after some time. In general, hydraulic fracturing is used in 70% of the company’s wells. One of the main tasks of Gazprom Neft is the selection of solutions for the economically viable production of oil from the Bazhenov formation. Incl. the company selects the composition and volume of hydraulic fracturing fluids and proppant, the injection rate, as well as the number of stages. Previous tests have shown the effectiveness of high-speed and large-volume hydraulic fracturing for the development of the Bazhenov formation. The created domestic hydraulic fracturing fleet to carry out all types of hydraulic fracturing operations, incl. large-volume, high-speed hydraulic fracturing in one operation with one fleet.
