Baker Hughes taking shale techniques offshore – Houston Chronicle

Photo: Michael Ciaglo, Staff

Jim Sessions, Baker Hughes vice president for completions, introduces the company's deep-water multistage fracturing service, DeepFrac, on Monday at the Offshore Technology Conference.

Jim Sessions, Baker Hughes vice president for completions, introduces the company's deep-water multistage fracturing service, DeepFrac, on Monday at the Offshore Technology Conference.

Baker Hughes taking shale techniques offshore

Baker Hughes is moving the process that launched the shale revolution to the deep ocean waters with its new "DeepFrac" technology.

The hydraulic fracturing product unveiled Monday at the Offshore Technology Conference at NRG Park is intended to produce more oil in increasingly concentrated areas while using less time and money.

Although oil companies have used variations of fracking for offshore production for several years, Baker Hughes is following the onshore trend of using more and more frac jobs with less spacing in between. Fracking and horizontal drilling combined to spur the onshore oil and gas boom of the last 10 years or so.

While the new DeepFrac technology won't suddenly make all of the struggling offshore sector profitable again, said Jim Sessions, Baker Hughes vice president for completions, it could increase the efficiency of production and lower costs. "It's a significant step along the way," he said.

Fracking is a laborious, multistep process that involves blasting sand or small metallic balls along with water and chemicals to unlock oil and gas. DeepFrac eliminates many of those steps, Sessions said. It uses movable tube-shaped sleevesto control the flow of oil, eliminating the need for some extra piping and cementing in wells.

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Sessions described the technology as a "ball-activated DeepFrac sleeve." Baker Hughes said the device will provide "unprecedented efficiency gains."

DeepFrac will allow companies to frac up to 20 stages - up from just five, in some cases - and cut certain well completion steps from weeks to days, the company said. A stage is a slightly different location that is fracked in a well, and increasing the number of areas for fracking can increase production.

Sessions said a recent 15-stage frac job completed in 11 days in the Gulf of Mexico saved $40 million and about 25 days versus a conventional three-stage process.

There are pros and cons to each approach, said Andrew Hasemann, a sales manager at rival Halliburton.

"We can't do as many stages but theirs are smaller," Hasemann said.

Halliburton routinely performs five-stage frac jobs in deepwater environments. It may take a little longer with fewer stages, but Halliburton can produce more oil and gas overall with more control in more targeted areas, Hasemann said.

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Baker Hughes taking shale techniques offshore - Houston Chronicle