Fracturing fluids The two main purpose of fracturing fluid is to extend fractures and to carry proppant (usually a sieved

sand or specific size sand) into the formation and stay there with out damaging the formation or production of the well. Two methods of transporting the proppant in the fluid is high-rate and/or high-viscosity. With high-viscosity you tend to have large dominant fractures, while with high-rate you tend to have small spread out micro-fractures. With high-rate, there can be a job known as a slickwater, where a fracturing fluid is pumped at a high rate to ensure the rate of the fluid carries the proppant down the well, through the perforations, and into the formation. With these types of jobs, there is usually a polymer pumped with the fluid known as a friction reducer. The purpose of a friction reducer is to reduce pressure loss to friction, thus allowing the pumps to pump at a higher rate without having greater pressure on the surface. Rate jobs have trouble at high concentrations of proppant thus more water is required to carry the same amount of proppant. Slickwater is usually the most-desired type of job on shale formations, but this is not always the case. There are a variety of chemicals that can be used to increase the viscosity. With any viscosity increase, some type of gelling chemical must be used first. One of the most common gelling agents used is guar (commonly used in ice cream as a thickening agent), but there are several others including guar derivatives and cellulose gelling agents. These are known as gel jobs. Oil can also be used to increase the viscosity for formations that are water sensitive, but are not considered gel. All of these are known as gels in the frac industry, but the main thing that links them is that they are long polymer chains, on the chemical level, to increase the viscosity. The rate of viscosity increase for several gelling agents is pH-dependent, and thus occasionally pH modifiers must be added to ensure viscosity of the gel. If a greater viscosity is needed than a gel job, an ion can be added known as a crosslinker. A crosslinker takes the long chemical chains and connects them, thus the concept of crosslink. There are several types of chemicals that can be used as a crosslinker (some only work with certain gels), boron being the common one used with guar gels. Diesel could be cross-linked since it is a long polymer, and creates a fluid almost identical to naepolm (again good for formations sensitive to water or water is detrimental to production). Many crosslink chemicals are only effective in a certain pH range, thus pH modifiers almost always need to be run with crosslinkers or some crosslinker chemicals have a pH modifier premixed. These are known as crosslink jobs. Viscosity is used to carry proppant into the formation, but when a well is being flowed back or produced, it is undesireable to have the fluid pull the proppant out of the formation. For this reason, a chemical known as a breaker is almost always pumped with all gel or crosslinked fluids to reduce the viscosity. This chemical is usually an oxidizer or an enzyme. The oxidizer reacts with the gel to break it down to reduce the fluids viscosity, to ensure no proppant is pulled from the formation. An enzyme acts as a catalyst for the breaking down of the gel. CO2 and nitrogen are also pumped with the fluid occasionally. These are known as energized fluid jobs. These are usually pumped with a foamer to ensure the fluid mixes well with the gas. The quality of the job is the percentage of the gas by volume.

Initially it is common to pump some amount (normally 6000 gallons or less) of HCl (usually 28%-5%), or acetic acid (usually 45% -5%), to clean the perforations or break down the near well bore and ultimately reduce pressure seen on the surface. At this point, the pumps are usually brought up to the rate the job calls for or what can be accomplished without exceeding pressure limits. Then the proppant is started and stepped up in concentration. For slickwater it is common to include sweeps or a reduction in the proppant concentration temporarily to ensure the well is not overwhelmed with proppant causing a screen-off. Fracture monitoring Injection of radioactive tracers, along with the other substances in hydraulic-fracturing fluid, is used to determine the injection profile and location of fractures created by hydraulic fracturing.[36] Patents describe in detail how several tracers are typically used in the same well. Wells are hydraulically fractured in different stages.[37] Tracers with different half-lives are used for each stage.[37][38] Their half-lives range from 40.2 hours (Lanthanum-140) to 5.27 years (Cobalt-60).[39] Amounts per injection of radionuclide are listed in the The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission guidelines.[40] The NRC guidelines also list a wide range or radioactive materials in solid, liquid and gaseous forms that are used as field flood or enhanced oil and gas recovery study applications tracers used in single and multiple wells.[40] Some of the most commonly used include Antimony-124, Bromine-82, Iodine-125, Iodine-131, Iridium-192, and Scandium-46.[40] Other potentially suitable tracers are named in various patents.[41][37][38] Measurements of the pressure and rate during the growth of a hydraulic fracture, as well as knowing the properties of the fluid and proppant being injected into the well provides the most common and simplest method of monitoring a hydraulic fracture treatment. This data, along with knowledge of the underground geology can be used to model information such as length, width and conductivity of a propped fracture.[31] For more advanced applications, Microseismic monitoring is sometimes used to estimate the size and orientation of hydraulically induced fractures. Microseismic activity is measured by placing an array of geophones in a nearby wellbore. By mapping the location of any small seismic events associated with the growing hydraulic fracture, the approximate geometry of the fracture is inferred. Tiltmeter arrays, deployed on the surface or down a well, provide another technology for monitoring the strains produced by hydraulic fracturing.[citation needed] Horizontal completions Since the early 2000s, advances in drilling and completion technology have made drilling horizontal wellbores much more economical. Horizontal wellbores allow for far greater exposure to a formation than a conventional vertical wellbore. This is particularly useful in shale formations which do not have sufficient permeability to produce economically with a vertical well. Such wells when drilled onshore are now usually hydraulically fractured many times, especially in North America. The type of wellbore completion used will affect how many times the formation is fractured, and at what locations along the horizontal section of the wellbore.[42]

In North America, shale reservoirs such as the Bakken, Barnett, Montney, Haynesville, Marcellus, and most recently the Eagle Ford, Niobrara and Utica shales are drilled, completed and fractured using this method. The method by which the fractures are placed along the wellbore is most commonly achieved by one of two methods, known as 'plug and perf' and 'sliding sleeve'.[citation needed] The wellbore for a plug and perf job is generally composed of standard joints of steel casing, either cemented or uncemented, which is set in place at the conclusion of the drilling process. Once the drilling rig has been removed, a wireline truck is used to perforate near the end of the well, following which a fracturing job is pumped (commonly called a stage). Once the stage is finished, the wireline truck will set a plug in the well to temporarily seal off that section, and then perforate the next section of the wellbore. Another stage is then pumped, and the process is repeated as necessary along the entire length of the horizontal part of the wellbore.[43] The wellbore for the sliding sleeve technique is different in that the sliding sleeves are included at set spacings in the steel casing at the time it is set in place. The sliding sleeves are usually all closed at this time. When the well is ready to be fractured, using one of several activation techniques, the bottom sliding sleeve is opened and the first stage gets pumped. Once finished, the next sleeve is opened which concurrently isolates the first stage, and the process repeats. For the sliding sleeve method, wireline is usually not required.[citation needed] These completion techniques may allow for more than 30 stages to be pumped into the horizontal section of a single well if required, which is far more than would typically be pumped into a vertical well.[7] Chemicals A variety of additives are used in hydraulic fracturing fluids. Over the life of a typical gas well, up to 100,000 US gallons (380,000 l; 83,000 imp gal) of chemical additives may be used. These additives (listed in a U.S. House of Representatives Report[44]) include biocides, surfactants, viscosity-modifiers, and emulsifiers. They vary widely in toxicity: Many are used in household products such as cosmetics, lotions, soaps, detergents, furniture polishes, floor waxes, and paints,[45] and some are used in food products. Some, however, are known carcinogens, some are toxic, and some are neurotoxins. For example: benzene (causes cancer, bone marrow failure), lead (damages the nervous system and causes brain disorders), ethylene glycol (antifreeze, causes death), methanol (highly toxic), boric acid (kidney damage, death), 2-butoxyethanol (causes hemolysis). Radioactive tracers are also included in hydraulic fracturing fluid.[40][37][38] The potential consequences of exposure to radioactivity include cell death and cancer, depending on exposure level.[46] The 2011 US House of Representatives investigative report on the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing states that out of 2,500 hydraulic fracturing products, "[m]ore than 650 of these products contained chemicals that are known or possible human carcinogens, regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, or listed as hazardous air pollutants".[44] The report also shows that between 2005 and 2009, 279 products had at least one component listed as "proprietary" or "trade secret" on their Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) required Material

Safety Data Sheet (MSDS). The MSDS is a list of chemical components in the products of chemical manufacturers, and according to OSHA, a manufacturer may withhold information designated as "proprietary" from this sheet. When asked to reveal the proprietary components, most companies participating in the investigation were unable to do so, leading the committee to surmise these companies are injecting fluids containing unknown chemicals about which they may have limited understanding of the potential risks posed to human health and the environment (12).[44] Without knowing the identity of the proprietary components, regulators cannot test for their presence. This prevents government regulators from establishing baseline levels of the substances prior to hydraulic fracturing and documenting changes in these levels, thereby making it impossible to prove that hydraulic fracturing is contaminating the environment with these substances.[47] Third-party laboratories are performing analyses on soil, air, and water near the fracturing sites to measure the level of contamination by some of the known chemicals, but not the proprietary substances, involved in hydraulic fracturing. Each state has a contact person in charge of such regulation.[48] A map of these contact people can be found at FracFocus.org as well.[49] Another 2011 study identified 632 chemicals used in natural gas operations. Only 353 of these are well-described in the scientific literature; and of these, more than 75% could affect skin, eyes, respiratory and gastrointestinal systems; roughly 40-50% could affect the brain and nervous, immune and cardiovascular systems and the kidneys; 37% could affect the endocrine system; and 25% were carcinogens and mutagens. The study indicated possible long-term health effects that might not appear immediately. The study recommended full disclosure of all products used, along with extensive air and water monitoring near natural gas operations; it also recommended that fracking's exemption from regulation under the US Safe Drinking Water Act be rescinded.[50] Some states have started requiring natural gas companies to "disclose the names of all chemicals to be stored and used a drilling site," keeping a record on file at the states environmental agency, such as the case in Pennsylvania with the Department of Environmental Protection and in New York with the Department of Environmental Conservation.[51] However, the continuing concern of some activists who oppose hydraulic fracturing is the lack of information really provided. According to Weston Wilson in Affirming Gasland, "about 50% or so of these MSDS sheets lack a specific chemical name, and some MSDS sheets simply claim 'proprietary' status and list none of the chemicals in that container."[52] As a result, some activists are calling for specific disclosure of chemicals used, such as the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) number and specific chemical formulas, and increased access to such information. In his State of the Union address for 2012, Barack Obama stated his intention to force fracking companies to disclose the chemicals they use,[53] though the subsequent, proposed guidelines were criticised for failing to specify how drillers will disclose the chemicals they use.[54]