Unconventional reservoirs are the focus of the petroleum industry, especially in the United States with many major Shale plays, including Eagle Ford, the Bakken, Marcellus, Niobrara, Haynesville etc. These plays have tremendous amount of oil and gas in place but at the same time, they inherit very complex characteristics and extremely low permeability. In order to support commercial production from these resources, horizontal wells with multiple stages hydraulic fractures are required to create a large contact area with reservoir rock. Factors that affect the generated contact area include reservoir rock property, stiffness, Poisson’s ratio, lateral length, number of fractures, amount of fluid and proppant pumped in, type of fluid and proppant, etc. Among these factors, this paper focuses on analyzing reservoir and rock properties, which are essential as they determine the potential of the reservoir and the feasibility of hydraulic fracturing, to identify a good target zone. Then spacing between stages and horizontal wells were investigated in this paper in order to maximum production. Fracturing fluid design as far as type and volume can be easily optimized as long as economics allows and it is not within the scope of this paper. This study is done on Niobrara formation oil play, which is found throughout the Rockies in the DJ basin. DJ basin extends to 8000 square miles roughly, with an estimated 4-10+Bboe of recoverable resource from the Niobrara formation. Comparing with other Shale plays, Niobrara development is still in its early development time. It is hoped that this paper can provide some insights to future operations in this field.
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