Energy Group: Fracture Gradient: Fact or Fiction

An assessment of the magnitude of the minimum in situ total stress stress in rock formations is of major importance in various areas of petroleum engineering including wellbore stability and fracture geometry prediction and in well stimulation applications. More recently, the Energy Transition requires full understanding of rock behaviour in terms of retention capacity.

It is clear the term 'fracture gradient' means different things to different sub-surface disciplines, which may result from terminology not being standardised but also because different disciplines refer to alternative aspects of stress measurements in boreholes.

This conference aims to bring the exploration, drilling, stimulation & development communities together, to establish what we know, how to standardise terminology, and how to establish the state of the art and best practice.

Convenors:

• Richard Swarbrick 
• Stephen O’Connor 
• Tony Addis
• Johunn Figenschou 
• Tim Wynn
• Emma Tavener 
• Stephan Petmecky 
• Baidehi Mukherjee