Examining Fracturing Performance With Ceramic Proppants on Sandstone Reservoir Rock—A Simulation Study

ABSTRACT This study examines hydraulic fracturing (HF) performance in oil‐bearing rock in the Upper Assam basin, India, using a fracDesign simulator employing varied proppant types and fracture designs. This work first characterizes the sandstone reservoir parameters, following which applicable proppant properties were investigated. Other properties that were considered for the analysis include fracturing fluid rheology and fracture design model. The proposed study employed a total of 32 different proppants, which were examined for their response to a total of 16 different sensitive analyses related to fracture design. The 32 proppants belong to following three types, that is, sand, ceramic, or modified ceramic proppant. Preliminary screening of 32 proppants was performed to shortlist the 10 best performing proppants on the basis of stress versus permeability behaviors, fracture performance, fracture half‐length versus fracture height curves, net pressure curve, fracture height curve, fracture half‐length versus width curves, and maximum half‐length curves. Previous studies did not consider the proppant type for comparison but rather insisted on the size of the proppant, mostly in doing the assessment of the HF performance. This is the innovative aspect considered under the present study, which resulted in the selection of the 10 high‐performing proppants. The findings of the quantitative assessment highlight the achieving of the maximum permeability of 22.3 D by ceramic and modified ceramic proppant. Similarly, a maximum productivity index value of 1.02 was displayed by modified ceramic and ceramic proppant. An 188‐m fracture half‐length was obtained with ceramic proppant; a maximum net pressure of 22 atm was achieved with both ceramic proppant and modified ceramic proppant. A fracture width of 5.5 mm was obtained with modified ceramic proppant; a maximum fracture half‐length of 210 mm was obtained with both ceramic and modified ceramic proppants. Hydraulic maximum half‐length of 220 m was obtained with ceramic proppant. These extensive studies help identify 10 best performing proppants, which, on further screening against 16 parameters, resulted in establishing the result that ceramic proppant outperforms the other proppant types no matter if the size is similar to or different from other proppant types. These novel findings establish that it is the proppant type, irrespective of their sizes, that governs the flow performance post‐HF operations.