BJ Services, Baker Hughes Unveil IntelliFrac Services

BJ Services Company and Baker Hughes have launched the IntelliFrac™ service, an integration of state-of-the-art fracturing and production enhancement services from BJ with advanced microseismic services from Baker Hughes. The combined offering enables operators to monitor fracture dimensions during stimulation treatments and allows real-time control of fracture operations. Together, BJ and Baker Hughes blend more than 28 years of shale gas fracturing experience and a dedicated shale fracturing technology team with microseismic inversion and 3D modeling capabilities.

"The IntelliFrac service gives both BJ Services' and Baker Hughes' customers a seamless fracturing and microseismic offering," said Jeff Hibbeler, BJ Services vice president, technology and logistics. "Being able to look downhole and change the fracturing process on-the-fly is especially critical in areas with complex fracturing, such as shales, where BJ has successfully designed and pumped more than 17,000
oil and gas shale frac stages around the world."

James McDougall, Baker Hughes vice president, Baker Atlas marketing, noted, "With IntelliFrac services our clients can maximize well and field performance using Baker Hughes' formation evaluation and cased-hole wireline expertise with BJ Services' world-class pumping and stimulation services. Fracturing services can be a significant percentage of total well completion costs, so getting an optimal stimulation treatment is critical. The combination of superior technologies, seismic experts and experience provides our customers with the knowledge they need to appropriately invest their stimulation program spend."

During hydraulic fracturing operations, the IntelliFrac service monitors and measures the microseismic events that indicate key fracture properties, including azimuth, height, length, volume and complexity of the induced fractures. By understanding hydraulic fracture propagation, operators can make better onlocation treatment management decisions, and in turn reduce well completion and stimulation risk and uncertainty. Once the microseismic data set has been gathered and processed, operators can use the data to optimize field development plans, and potentially reduce the number of wellbores required to develop the field.

Leading Fracturing Technologies

BJ Services begins every critical project with its Understand the Reservoir First™ concept, which uses petrophysical reservoir characterization and advanced map-based methods to study reservoir quality, well architecture, and drilling, completion, stimulation and production results. With this knowledge, BJ considers the dynamics of the entire field to determine specific treatments for each well, instead of utilizing a one-size-fits-all approach, to maximize productivity and minimize well stimulation costs. BJ's Technology and Operations Support Center is also part of the mix and works directly with its sales and operations teams, as well as its customers, to ensure that technologies address the needs of the reservoir for the best well completion solution possible. To date, numerous technologies have been introduced with widespread utility in shale reservoirs around the world.

Leading Formation Evaluation Technologies

Baker Hughes has developed new technologies and established a shale gas team of geologists, geoscientists and geophysicists who focus on characterizing shale gas basins. In the Baker Hughes Shale Collaboration Room, these experienced scientists ensure that the reservoir is optimized from stimulation to production.

  • The Baker Hughes Shale Gas Evaluation Suite is a complementary service that accurately characterizes complex shale gas reservoirs to increase production, identify stimulation risks and optimize well placement and completion design to reduce costs. This suite of services features direct measurement of total organic carbon, advanced mineralogy and detailed geomechanical properties.
  • The Baker Hughes GasView™ high-resolution formation gas measurement service produces an exceptionally clear picture of the reservoir gas behind casing. Baker Hughes and BJ Services have been collaborating on the IntelliFrac service for several months prior to the announcement of their merger agreement.
     

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