The advent of mega-sized hydraulic fracturing jobs which incorporate increased proppant per foot density, enlarged fluid volumes, tighter cluster spacing, and shorter stages in the Bakken/Three Forks play, have led to significantly higher IP's on the order of 20% over the past two years. Yet despite this dramatic increase, concerns exist as to whether treatments are fully optimized with respect to costs of overall volumes, rates, and concentrations. This paper describes two case histories, one in the Middle Bakken and one in the Three Forks formations of the Williston Basin, where a multidisciplinary geoscience and engineering team was assembled to attempt to answer the optimization question within the confines of real-world operational logistics and cost constraints.
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