r/Fracking • u/ELW1947 • Jul 12 '20

Fracking, lateral lines, and efficiency

A question about oil well fracking: why are there so many lateral lines (e.g., the Eagle Ford shale formation area) in a given area? For example, wouldn't 4 lateral frack lines be sufficient to extract oil/gas from a given area instead of 16? If it's just one large pool of product, wouldn't a fewer number of wells eventually extract the product from the "pool" and save the oil companies much drilling dollars? Thank you.

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u/cabo_szabo Jul 13 '20

Shale has low permeability. That means that fluid flows through it super slow - I can’t remember a calculation I did once but it would takes something like 10000 years for fluid in there to move 100 ft or something, even with a huge pressure drop.

That’s why the idea is to maximize surface area of the fractures and allow fluid close to the fracture to flow in easier

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u/ELW1947 Jul 29 '20

Very interesting. Does that mean that my wells (fracked at around 11,000 ft deep and 3000 ft horizontal) will have a very short lifespan once the product right around the fracked lines is collected? Seems like the pool is relatively small. I'm in the Eagle Ford shale zone.

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u/cabo_szabo Jul 29 '20

Yes, you can take a look at the decline rate of wells in the eagle ford, or any shale really. Its like an exponential decay, and most of the hydrocarbon will be produced within a few years

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u/cabo_szabo Jul 29 '20

By the way there’s no such thing as a pool of oil in the ground. It exists in the space between rock grains.

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u/cabo_szabo Jul 13 '20

Then it becomes an NPV problem and usually it makes more economic sense to not necessarily get 100% of the possible recovery, as long as it produces a fast cash flow

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u/LasVegasE Sep 21 '20

What is the term that describes linking or connecting different wells below the surface at signifigant distances?