Preface

This book comprises the proceedings for the International Conference for Effective and Sus‐ tainable Hydraulic Fracturing (HF2013) which was held 20-22 May 2013 in Brisbane, Australia.

The goal of HF2013 was to advance hydraulic fracturing technology that is effective in its purpose and sustainable in its impacts on communities and environments by bringing togeth‐ er hydraulic fracturing experts not only from the oil and gas industry, but also from other application areas of hydraulic fracturing such as mining and geothermal energy production.

HF2013 consisted of 6 keynote lectures, 10 industry and research exhibits, and 47 technical presentations that correspond to full length papers in these open access electronic proceed‐ ings. Topics include hydraulic fracturing of naturally fractured formations, well completions and fracture initiation, induced seismicity, experimental investigations, and coupled model‐ ling. Beyond this mix of traditional and currently hot topics in hydraulic fracturing research, there are papers on applications in mining and also on regulations, risk, and communities.

We believe the conference program provided a unique mix of mainstream topics with emerging topics, complimentary areas, and input from sources that are often not tapped by oil and gas industry targeted conferences. These proceedings reflect this dynamic collection of contributors from a wide range of backgrounds, making this volume unlike any other previously compiled collection of papers on hydraulic fracturing.

HF2013 was a Specialized Conference supported by the International Society for Rock Me‐ chanics (ISRM) via the Australian Geomechanics Society and hosted by Australia's Com‐ monwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Organisational support was also provided by the University of Utah's Energy and Geoscience Institute (EGI) and the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA). Itasca is the conference Gold Sponsor. The support of these organisation as well as the lunch, session, and tea break sponsors is gratefully acknowledged.

> **The Organising Committee** May 2013 Brisbane, Australia

**Section 1**

**Keynote Lectures**

**Section 1**

**Keynote Lectures**

**Chapter 1**

**Fracturing Fluids**

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/56192

of the engineering design parameters are.

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

When fracturing, viscosity play a major role in providing sufficient fracture width to insure proppant entrance into the fracture, carrying the proppant from the wellbore to the fracture tip, generating a desired net pressure to control height growth and providing fluid loss con‐ trol. The fluid used to generate the desired viscosity must be safe to handle, environmental‐ ly friendly, non-damaging to the fracture conductivity and to the reservoir permeability, easy to mix, inexpensive and able to control fluid loss. This is a very demanding list of re‐ quirements that has been recognized since the beginning of Hydraulic fracturing. This paper describes the history of fracturing fluids, the types of fracturing fluids used, the engineering requirement of a good fracturing fluid, how viscosity is measured and what the limitations

The selection of a proper fracturing fluid is all about choices. It begins with choosing the pad volume where one must consider what and how much pad is required to create the desired fracture geometry. This is followed by choosing how much viscosity the fluid needs to have

**•** Provide a desired net pressure to either treat some desired height growth or prevent

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Montgomery; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

**•** Provide carrying capability to transport proppant from the wellbore to the fracture tip.

**•** Provide sufficient fracture width to insure proppant entrance into the fracture.

breaking out into some undesirable zone for example water.

Carl Montgomery

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

to:
