At its most basic, a chemical tracer allows operators to see the flow-back from each stage of
Shale production's growing complexity requires more evolved chemical tracers to find correlations between the stage production of oil and the geophysical data of a well. While only 15 tracers per well were required to identify how operational efficiency could be improved five years ago, now wells more commonly use 50 tracers, said Dave Bucior, Tracerco's Reservoir business development manager. Oil and gas diagnostics company Tracerco seeks to develop more environmentally friendly chemical tracers that work for different types of well.