Why Orient?

... the perforation design that delivered the highest cluster efficiency had a design with 0 degree in-line perforation orientation, higher initial perforation friction and smaller entry hole diameter.

(SPE 217824 Hydraulic Fracture Technology Conference, February 2024)

The uniformity of proppant placement can be improved by optimizing perforation phasing,

diameter, and shot count. These changes are simple and cheap to implement, making perforation

design a ‘low hanging fruit’ for improving project economics.

(SPE 217771 Hydraulic Fracture Technology Conference, February 2024)

An internal study indicated that ConocoPhillips improved estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) by a minimum of 5% when using high-side-oriented perforating

   (JPT Article - Getting Your Perforations in a Line Can Mean More-Productive Fracturing – July 2021)

Orienting perforations along the high side of the wellbore significantly improved treatment distribution among perforation clusters ... without needing to increase initial perforation friction 

Stages with non-oriented perforation clusters had more than 4 times the number of runaway perforations than clusters oriented on the high side

(SPE 204203 Hydraulic Fracture Technology Conference, May 2021)

Breakdown pressures can be over 50% lower on the top and bottom of wellbore vs sides

  (SPE 204177 Hydraulic Fracture Technology Conference, May 2021)

Oriented perforations are more likely to have same diameter and improve treatment distribution among all perforations.

  (SPE 204203 Hydraulic Fracture Technology Conference, May 2021)

All wells that use 4 shots/cluster or less should be oriented to avoid breakdown differentials

  (Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering, Volume 45, September 2017)

ORIENT XS ---PROVEN TO ORIENT AT +/- 10°

The folks at NexTier Completion Solutions were kind enough to host Diamondback Industries and Frac Innovation LLC for a day this week to help us test the effectiveness of the Orient XS perforation orientation tool.

SETUP

A full perforating string was assembled using a CCL, eight 3-1/8 guns as well as a diamondback DB20 plug setting tool with a 4 3/8 sleeve. The Orient XS contained its onboard sensor to measure rotation and the toolstring was placed in 80' of 5.5" casing, rotated to various staring orientations and pulled through the casing to see how quickly the guns would orient.

RESULTS

As a baseline, the tool was run with a pair of eccentric weight bars (each 7' long). As seen in the image below, the tools rotated to 40 degrees, but never got close to 0.  In stark contrast, the Orient XS tool very quickly oriented the string to 0 degrees, with orientations bouncing between +/- 10 degrees. This data supports previous results which showed the Orient XS is highly effective and can be delivered at a fraction of internal bearing oriented tools.