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AAPG Bulletin

Abstract

DOI: 10.1306/02101615120

Recovery rates of fracturing fluids and provenance of produced water from hydraulic fracturing of Silurian Qusaiba hot shale, northern Saudi Arabia, with implications on fracture network

Peter Birkle1

1Geology Technology Team, EXPEC Advanced Research Center, Core Area, Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Geochemical fingerprinting of produced water from hydraulic fracturing projects is an essential tool to trace their provenance during the postfracturing period, to quantify recovery rates and volumes of fracturing fluids, and to visualize the geodynamic structure of natural or induced fracture networks. A total of 41 produced water samples from an exploration well in the Northern Arabia Exploration Area in Saudi Arabia were collected daily from the fracture-stimulated Qusaiba hot shale and analyzed for major ions and trace elements and partially for environmental isotopes. The postfracturing period shows an initial return of supply water and potassium chloride brine, subsequently replaced by the inflow of sodium chloride–type formation water with a stable plateau salinity of 50,000 mg/L. Less than 10% of the total injected fracturing fluids were recovered during postfracturing, whereas 78.8 vol. % of the total recovered fluid is composed of formation water (20,843 out of 26,446 bbls) during the study period. Coinciding values between logged reservoir temperature and calculated geothermometers confirm the provenance of pore water from the Qusaiba hot shale or from nearby units. The recharge of the Silurian sequence with meteoric surface water occurred during the early Holocene (6–6.7 ka), as evidenced by geochronological dating with the 14C method and δ18O/δ2H values close to the global meteoric water line. The inflow of formation water into the stimulated shale layer in the postfracturing stage could be originated by the natural occurrence of pore water within a naturally fractured, black shale layer or, more likely, by the rise of groundwater from the underlying Sarah sandstones via migration pathways of natural or newly formed, vertically induced hydraulic fractures. For this particular well site and the specific hydraulic fracturing project, chemical and isotopic fingerprinting confirms the absence of ascending migration pathways from the Silurian Qusaiba hot shale toward a shallower groundwater system, which are isolated through a lithological set of more than 900 m (3000 ft) of impermeable mudstone from the Qusaiba Member.

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