ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to cover a lot of information in a quite short space: a single chapter for a subject that can fill whole books. Necessarily, the authors have focused on the aspects of hydraulic fracturing that are specific to unconventional reservoirs. Consequently, we assumed that the reader already has a certain level of background knowledge about the subject. For those readers who lack this background knowledge, or those who perhaps wish to refresh their knowledge of certain aspects of fracturing, the authors recommend the following excellent publications: Howard and Fast (1970), Ely (1994), Gidley et al. (1989), Economides and Nolte (2000), Economodes, Nolte, and Ahmed (1998), Economides and Martin (2007), and Martin (2009).
