About the Book

FRAC without a K

In this book, John W. Ely publishes, in its original form, the original chapters and then critique or simply exhibit the changes that have occurred as time has passed. It has been amazing that some of the technology has literally expanded exponentially such as the type and handling of fracturing proppant and the huge changes in understanding very low permeability reservoirs. At the same time, there has been little or no development in the area of conventional fluids, i.e., for usage in conventional fracturing treatments for moderately permeable reservoirs.

John attempts to bring to the readers a very objective, sometimes subjective, comparison of everything from proppants, chemicals, equipment, fracture design, fracture optimization, and refracturing techniques. There may be, as was the case in the other books, some diversion to important oilfield war stories.

John has gone through the original chapters to basically give the reader some idea of what is covered throughout the book. The largest changes that have occurred in hydraulic fracturing relate to very high-volume slick water treatments with small size, lower quality sand. This will be a subject he spends some time on, enlarging the chapter on fluids to contain more than conventional fracturing fluids. He also discusses topics such as why high-strength proppant is not required, why small or low-crush proppant, many times, exceeds the performance of more expensive higher-quality proppant.