Proppant flowback within deep hot wells and/or highlyrnproductive wells is a major problem in the oil and gasrnindustry. Under these extreme conditions, many of the currentrnproducts and processes to control flowback often fail. As such,rnimproved or alternative technology and procedures arernconstantly being sought. One such technology is therndevelopment of deformable proppants.rnMaterial and structural improvement to a deformable proppantrnhas allowed laboratory test conditions to be extended to higherrntemperature, closure stress and flowrate. As a result of thisrnfine tuning, exceptional proppant flowback control has beenrnobtained. Testing of this new deformable proppant, blendedrnwith typical fracturing proppant, has shown 50 fold increasesrnin flowrate and 100 fold increases in pressure drop arernattainable without pack failure, while still maintaining fracturernconductivity.rnFurthermore, this deformable proppant has been applied inrnwells where current technology would either fail or havernserious drawbacks. In two primarily gas producing reservoirs,rnthe addition of this deformable proppant to proppant packsrnplaced during fracturing treatments, has been observed to veryrneffectively control proppant flowback under conditions of highrnbottom hole temperature, high fracture closure stress and highrnproduction regimes. In order to facilitate field application, newrnaddition and monitoring procedures were developed tornaccomplish these successful fracturing operations. Therndevelopmental testing, successful application and wellrnperformance all indicates significant improvement in proppantrnpack integrity.
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