Evolving chemical tracers increase shale production
Shale production's growing complexity requires more evolved chemical tracers to find correlations between the stage production of oil and the geophysical data of a well. While only 15 tracers per well were required to identify how operational efficiency could be improved five years ago, now wells more commonly use 50 tracers, said Dave Bucior, Tracerco's Reservoir business development manager. Oil and gas diagnostics company Tracerco seeks to develop more environmentally friendly chemical tracers that work for different types of well.
At its most basic, a chemical tracer allows operators to see the flow-back from each stage of a well.

In an unconventional well, which may have four dozen or more stages, operators can find this quantitative measurement useful.

“Putting tracers in the well is neat, but I want a better well. I want to make money from it. I don’t want to do it just because I like science,” says Dave Bucior, Tracerco’s Reservoir business development manager.

“It’s nice to say that I got 10% of the oil from stage five and 20% of the oil from stage seven, but I want to know why stage seven gave me 20%, and why stage five gave me 10%.”