Last month, Pat Handren of Denbury Resources, Inc. gave us his insights with respect to optimizing frac jobs. His findings were published in SPE paper 110451 with co-author, Terry Palisch of Carbo Ceramics. He shared case studies from his work in the Cotton Valley Taylor sand that showed increased well performance using ceramic proppants in larger sizes over the typical sand proppants used in offset wells. Pat made the case that if we are looking for better frac jobs we need to look at both the frac job size (length) and the frac job conductivity. He also reminded us that proppant transport in a frac resembles building a sand dune and that the last stage pumped may be traveling over the dune and into the far reaches of the propped portion of the frac and may not be in the near-wellbore region.

Don’t forget to sign up for our annual golf tournament to be held on May 2, 2008 at Oakhurst Golf Club. If you need additional entry forms or would like to sponsor something or bring a door prize please contact either, Rick Varner, XTO or Kyle Janik, Hallibuton.

Next month our speaker will be the SPE Distinguished Lecturer Ronald Harrell, Ryder Scott Company. His talk is titled “Petroleum Reserve Estimates, Where We Are and Where We Appear to be Headed”. This will be our last lunch meeting of the year so I hope to see you all on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 11:30 am.

Since next month will be our last meeting until next fall, I want to thank all of you who attend our meetings. I hope you felt we had some informative and interesting talks this year and I want to invite everyone to come back September 9, 2008 when have Richard Spears scheduled to kick off our new year. This summer you will hear more about our September 30, 2008 symposium – so be sure to sign up for that when you get your registration form in the mail.

Bryan Montgomery

East Texas Section Chair