Fracture network engineering for hydraulic fracturing

Fracture network engineering (FNE) involves the design, analysis, modeling, and monitoring of infield activities aimed at enhancing or minimizing rock mass disturbance. FNE relies specifically on advanced techniques to model fractured rock masses and correlate microseismic (MS) field observations with simulated microseismicity generated from these models. Hydrofracture stimulation is an example where FNE is playing a role, with hydraulic treatments now being widely used to optimize production volumes and extraction rates in petroleum reservoirs, enhanced geothermal systems, and preconditioning operations in caving mines. MS monitoring is now becoming a standard tool for evaluating the geometry and evolution of the fracture network induced during a given treatment, principally by source locating MS hypocenters and visualizing these with respect to the treatment volume and infrastructure. The integrated use of synthetic rock mass (SRM) modeling of the hydrofracturing with enhanced microseismic analysis (EMA...