Nanoparticle 'tracers' will help frackers track productive wells

The device gathers data on how tracers – microscopic particles that can be pumped into and recovered from wells – move through deep rock formations that have been opened by hydraulic fracturing.

Drilling companies use fracturing to pump oil and gas from previously unreachable reservoirs. Fluids are pumped into a wellbore under high pressure to fracture rocks, and materials like sand or ceramic - dubbed proppants in the US - hold the fractures open.

‘They’re basically making a crack in the rock and filling it with little beads,’ said Rice chemist Andrew Barron, whose lab produced the device detailed in Environmental Science Processes and Impacts.

Companies struggle, however, to know which insertion wells (where fluids are pumped in) are connected to the production wells where oil and gas are pumped out.

‘They may be pumping down three wells and producing from six, but they have very little idea of which well is connected to which,’ he said in statement.