"In general, the practice of managing flowback to protect a fracture job in a horizontal well is not new. Gas producers working the Haynesville Shale, a relatively soft formation in Louisiana, learned several years ago that managing the release of flowback often meant the difference between a live well and a dead one.

Crafton, who is also an SPE distinguished lecturer and author of several SPE papers on flowback, coined the term “slowback” to describe how his clients in the Haynesville managed to overcome their early failures. While working for an operator there, he found that crews were being paid bonuses to get the flowing surface pressure of gas wells from 1,000 psi to 2,000 psi down to the line pressure of 300 psi within 36 hours.

“I started looking at the production histories and you could see these were awesome completions,” he said. “But when they would impose that enormous pressure drop, the wells were ruined.” The trick was to slow down the flowback stage, he said. This practice of slowback became widely adopted by major players in the Haynesville that have credited it with increasing ultimate recovery rates by 5%.

Crafton believes this type of flowback management that maximizes recovery will deliver much greater value to the shale business than the strategies that drive up initial production, something he acknowledges may be more attractive to a producer’s investors.

“A gentle flowback results in high [estimated ultimate recovery],” and a lower risk to well damage Crafton said. But the downside is that slower flowback means a lower short-term rate of return. “So, it’s all about company philosophy,” he said.

SPE 119894

This is actually grade school logic that most anyone using their own money drilling and producing a gas well would use to maximize recovery and return on investment.

The problem is nobody in the shale gas business uses their own money and they are not interested in maximizing recovery rates, in spite of what they say, they are only interested in cash flow. The more, the faster, the better.

So, when you hear of 12 BCF cumprods. in six months in, for instance, the Marcellus, these are really not very prudent operators doing that. They are effectively increasing cumprod. over time and reducing EUR. They are increasing the probability of premature pressure depletion that will reduce recovery of GIP and leave valuable gas stranded in the rock forever, immobile.

It's hard to teach stuff like this to internet experts that are only interested in big numbers. But almost all operational decisions made by the shale industry do not have the best interest of the nation's remaining hydrocarbons at heart, quite the opposite. It's all about money. Spacing between wells and regulators leniency in this regard is equally poor reservoir management and detrimental to the county's hydrocarbon future.

Most oil men understand this. Most shale companies deeply in debt and in dire need of staying on the drilling hamster wheel do what they have to do to live another day and maximize compensation packages to upper management.