Hydraulic Fracturing Monitoring

Hydraulic fracturing -- sometimes called hydro-fracking or simply fracking -- is a drilling technique that's used to extract natural gas (or oil) from deep underground.
The process involves drilling a deep well a mile or more underground. After reaching a layer of rock that contains natural gas, the drill then turns horizontally to snake its way thousands of feet farther through that layer of rock.
Hydraulic fracturing is often used in areas where there's a lot of shale, a kind of rock made up of clay, quartz and other minerals. Natural gas found in shale formations is sometimes referred to as "shale gas."

Large areas of shale formations are found worldwide, and in the United States they're present from New York state and the Great Lakes area down to Texas, and across the Great Plains. Fracking is now occurring in over 30 states where shale and other rock formations promise a big yield of natural gas.
And, as other example of area where this natural gas exists in important quantity is in Saudi Arabia:
"A study from the US Geological Survey 10 years ago estimated a 50 per cent chance of there being 447 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas resources in the Qusaiba Paleozoic reservoirs in the Rub Al Khali and around the giant Ghawar oil field"

The presence of massive hydrocarbons deposits in the kingdom is another indicator of the likelihood of strong unconventional resources, since most shale deposits are situated in systems where conventional reserves are already significant. Saudi Arabia is clearly in a strong position with conventional natural gas reserves estimated at 267 trillion cubic feet.
The dominant shale deposit is the Qusaiba shale in the Eastern Province. The organic-rich shale in the Lower Qusaiba constitutes the main source rock for the kingdom's Paleozoic petroleum system.

To extract the natural gas, drillers pump millions of gallons of water, sand and a variety of chemicals into the well under extremely high pressure. That pressure is high enough to fracture the underground rock layer and the fracturing and cracking of the rock releases the natural gas into the well -- pressure then forces the natural gas up through the well to the surface.
This process is what we have to use today, in addition to the issues related to the environment and risk related to this solution, the monitoring of this method is still weak and companies must be able to have a full control of the pressure and temperature in the wells.

With our OpenField sensors, we claim that, we are pioneer in this area and our technology (MEMS) allows companies to increase their extracted natural gas volume.
Having a full and best monitoring of your Hydraulic fracturing process is, today, possible with our sensors.

Our Technical Solution:
GENERAL DESCRIPTION - FEATURES

Combining revolutionary MEMS ("Micro Electro Mechanical Systems") sensing chips with high resolution electronics, the OpenField micro-recorder (1.a) offers outstanding performance both in static and dynamic conditions, making it ideal for hydraulic fracturing monitoring.

The data acquisition system automatically switches between 'slow' and 'quick' modes to record high frequency pressure transients during the most critical periods of fracture formation.

The small size and rugged packaging offer key advantages to well operators, including easy deployment as a dummy gas lift valve or using slickline operations while gauge programming and data retrieval is made extremely simple by our USB cable Plug & Play interface .

Thanks to the low power demands of micro technology, a single, low cost AA battery enables up to 3 months of continuous operation and more than 24 months with a C battery sub.

• Fracturing job
• Build-up analysis
• Perforation jobs
• Well monitoring
• Gradient logging
• Reservoir evaluation
• Water injection
• Monitoring
• Flow assurance

Fracture formation monitoring is made easy with automatic transitions between 'quick' and 'slow' modes according to user-defined criteria. 'Quick mode' measurement frequency can be set between 1 and 128 Hz and slow mode acquisition rate between 1 and 64 seconds.
Let us help you, contact us or send us your inquiries.