Events

Speaker:  Dr. Nicolas P. Roussel, Senior Reservoir Geomechanicist at ConocoPhillips

Title of Seminar: “Methods to Measure Stress Shadowing During Fracturing and Enable Mapping of Induced Fractures”

Abstract:  Mechanical stress interference, also commonly called stress shadowing, refers to the change in stresses that occurs in the vicinity of hydraulic fractures. Because stress shadowing is ubiquitous and material in unconventional reservoirs, it greatly impacts completion design and field development strategies. And since it directly relates to physical characteristics of the induced fracture network such as dimension and orientation, it carries tremendous potential for fracture diagnostics. Traditional examples of techniques that measure and interpret stress shadowing manifestations are tiltmeter and microseismic monitoring.

Recently, novel stress-shadowing fracture diagnostic techniques have been proposed such as low-frequency distributed acoustic sensing, ISIP analysis and poroelastic response monitoring, with the latter two examples developed by the author. The escalation of shut-in pressures recorded at the end of each fracturing stage can inform fracture height and in-situ horizontal anisotropy. Poroelastic responses measured at offset wells by pressure gauges have been used to monitor and map the propagation of hydraulic fractures.

Biography:   Nico Roussel currently works at ConocoPhillips as a Senior Reservoir Geomechanicist within the Subsurface organization. His research focuses on geomechanical aspects of unconventional reservoirs. He has authored publications and patents on topics such as refracturing, infill simulation, fracture spacing/sequencing optimization, and stress/fracture diagnostics.

Nico holds a Ph.D. in Petroleum  Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the Paris Institute of Technology in France.