Development status and trend of shale-gas horizontal well staged fracturing tools at home and abroad

Shale gas, as the typical unconventional oil and gas resource, is characterized by low porosity and extra low matrix permeability. So far, horizontal well staged fracturing has become the key technology for the effcient development of shale gas reservoirs.In the North America, the shale gas development is now commercialized, and a series of shale gas fracturing technologies and their support tools aimed at volumetric stimulation are developed. In China, great progress has been made in shale gas development process and independently developed tools. In this paper, shale-gas horizontal well staged fracturing technologies were investigated, e.g. combined bridge plug/ball seat +cluster perforation and casing cementing sleeve. Then, the working principles and structural components of different tools (e.g. composite bridge plug, fully dissolvable bridge plug, OptiPort and FracPoint) were introduced briefy. Finally, their application status at home and abroad was illustrated briefy and their performance characteristics were comparatively analyzed. It is indicated that the future researches shall focus on the research of drillable composite bridge plug series, the technical research of fully dissolvable tools and the pilot research of wireless smart sliding sleeve.