A Novel Hydraulic Fracturing Model Fully Coupled with Geomechanics and Reservoir Simulator

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lujun Ji ◽  
Antonin Settari ◽  
Richard Burl Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
Reservoir Simulator ◽  
Fully Coupled

Work Flow History Matches Numerical Simulation Models of Fractured Shale Wells

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (04) ◽  
pp. 60-61
Author(s):  
Chris Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Numerical Simulation ◽  
Fracture Toughness ◽  
Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
History Matching ◽  
Simulation Models ◽  
Work Flow ◽  
Fracture Length ◽  
Matching Process ◽  
Rate Transient Analysis ◽  
Reservoir Simulator

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 199149, “Rate-Transient-Analysis-Assisted History Matching With a Combined Hydraulic Fracturing and Reservoir Simulator,” by Garrett Fowler, SPE, and Mark McClure, SPE, ResFrac, and Jeff Allen, Recoil Resources, prepared for the 2020 SPE Latin American and Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference, originally scheduled to be held in Bogota, Colombia, 17–19 March. The paper has not been peer reviewed. This paper presents a step-by-step work flow to facilitate history matching numerical simulation models of hydraulically fractured shale wells. Sensitivity analysis simulations are performed with a coupled hydraulic fracturing, geomechanics, and reservoir simulator. The results are used to develop what the authors term “motifs” that inform the history-matching process. Using intuition from these simulations, history matching can be expedited by changing matrix permeability, fracture conductivity, matrix-pressure-dependent permeability, boundary effects, and relative permeability. Introduction This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 199149, “Rate-Transient-Analysis-Assisted History Matching With a Combined Hydraulic Fracturing and Reservoir Simulator,” by Garrett Fowler, SPE, and Mark McClure, SPE, ResFrac, and Jeff Allen, Recoil Resources, prepared for the 2020 SPE Latin American and Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference, originally scheduled to be held in Bogota, Colombia, 17-19 March. The paper has not been peer reviewed. This paper presents a step-by-step work flow to facilitate history matching numerical simulation models of hydraulically fractured shale wells. Sensitivity analysis simulations are performed with a coupled hydraulic fracturing, geomechanics, and reservoir simulator. The results are used to develop what the authors term “motifs” that inform the history-matching process. Using intuition from these simulations, history matching can be expedited by changing matrix permeability, fracture conductivity, matrix-pressure-dependent permeability, boundary effects, and relative permeability. Introduction The concept of rate transient analysis (RTA) involves the use of rate and pressure trends of producing wells to estimate properties such as permeability and fracture surface area. While very useful, RTA is an analytical technique and has commensurate limitations. In the complete paper, different RTA motifs are generated using a simulator. Insights from these motif simulations are used to modify simulation parameters to expediate and inform the history- matching process. The simulation history-matching work flow presented includes the following steps: 1 - Set up a simulation model with geologic properties, wellbore and completion designs, and fracturing and production schedules 2 - Run an initial model 3 - Tune the fracture geometries (height and length) to heuristic data: microseismic, frac-hit data, distributed acoustic sensing, or other diagnostics 4 - Match instantaneous shut-in pressure (ISIP) and wellhead pressure (WHP) during injection 5 - Make RTA plots of the real and simulated production data 6 - Use the motifs presented in the paper to identify possible production mechanisms in the real data 7 - Adjust history-matching parameters in the simulation model based on the intuition gained from RTA of the real data 8 -Iterate Steps 5 through 7 to obtain a match in RTA trends 9 - Modify relative permeabilities as necessary to obtain correct oil, water, and gas proportions In this study, the authors used a commercial simulator that fully integrates hydraulic fracturing, wellbore, and reservoir simulation into a single modeling code. Matching Fracturing Data The complete paper focuses on matching production data, assisted by RTA, not specifically on the matching of fracturing data such as injection pressure and fracture geometry (Steps 3 and 4). Nevertheless, for completeness, these steps are very briefly summarized in this section. Effective fracture toughness is the most-important factor in determining fracture length. Field diagnostics suggest considerable variability in effective fracture toughness and fracture length. Typical half-lengths are between 500 and 2,000 ft. Laboratory-derived values of fracture toughness yield longer fractures (propagation of 2,000 ft or more from the wellbore). Significantly larger values of fracture toughness are needed to explain the shorter fracture length and higher net pressure values that are often observed. The authors use a scale- dependent fracture-toughness parameter to increase toughness as the fracture grows. This allows the simulator to match injection pressure data while simultaneously limiting fracture length. This scale-dependent toughness scaling parameter is the most-important parameter in determining fracture size.

Fully Integrating a Hydraulic Fracturing, Reservoir, and Wellbore Simulator into a Practical Engineering Tool

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark McClure
Keyword(s):  
User Interface ◽  
Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
Volume Fraction ◽  
3D Visualization ◽  
Constitutive Relations ◽  
Coupled Processes ◽  
Tight Coupling ◽  
Member States ◽  
Proppant Transport ◽  
Fully Coupled

<p>In this talk, I give an overview of our software ResFrac, which fully integrates a ‘true’ hydraulic fracturing simulator and a multiphase reservoir simulator (McClure et al., 2020a). Conventionally, these processes have been described with separate codes, using separate meshes, and with different physics. Integrating these two categories of software is advantageous because it enables seamless description of the entire lifecycle of a well. It is possible to seamlessly integrate wells with complex histories such as frac hits from offset wells, refracs, and huff and puff EOR injection.</p><p>ResFrac has been applied on 25+ studies for operators optimizing development of oil and gas resources in shale and has been commercially licensed by 15+ companies (https://www.resfrac.com/case-studies; https://www.resfrac.com/publications; https://www.resfrac.com/about-us/our-team). The simulator has a modern user-interface with embedded help-documentation, wizards to help set up simulations, automated validators to identify issues with the setup prior to submitting, and plotting capabilities to preview 3D and tabular inputs. Simulations are run on the cloud and results are continuously downloaded to the user’s computer. This allows a user to easily run a large number of simultaneous simulations from their personal computer. The user-interface includes a custom-built and fully-featured visualization tool for 3D visualization and 2D plotting.</p><p>Hydraulic fracturing simulators must handle a diverse set of coupled physics: mechanics of crack propagation and stress shadowing, fluid flow in the fractures, leakoff, transport of fluid additives that impart non-Newtonian flow characteristics, and proppant transport. Proppant transport is particularly complex because proppant settles out into an immobile bed and may screen out at the tip. Many fracturing simulators approximate wellbore flow effects. However, because these effects are closely coupled to fracturing processes (especially in horizontal wells that have multiple simultaneously propagating fractures), we include a fully meshed, detailed wellbore model in the code, along with treatment of perforation pressure drop and near-wellbore tortuosity.</p><p>In the literature, separate constitutive relations are available to describe transport in open cracks, closed unpropped cracks, and closed propped cracks. However, there were not relations in the literature designed to describe transport under conditions transitional between these end-member states. A general numerical simulator must be able to describe all conditions (and avoid discontinuous changes between equations). To address this limitation, we developed a new set of constitutive equations that can smoothly transition between these end-member states – smoothly handling any general combination of aperture, effective normal stress, saturation, proppant volume fraction, and non-Newtonian fluid rheology (McClure et al., 2020).</p><p>The code solves all equations in a fully coupled way, using an adaptive implicit method. The fully coupled approach is chosen because of the tight coupling between many of the key physical processes. Iterative coupling converges very slowly and/or forces excessively small timesteps when tightly coupled processes are handled with iterative or explicit coupling.</p><p>McClure, Kang, Hewson, and Medam. 2020. ResFrac Technical Writeup (v5). arXiv.</p>

RTA Assisted History Matching with a Combined Hydraulic Fracturing and Reservoir Simulator

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrett Fowler ◽  
Mark McClure ◽  
Jeff Allen
Keyword(s):  
Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
History Matching ◽  
Assisted History Matching ◽  
Reservoir Simulator

scholarly journals Fully Coupled Multi-Scale Model for Gas Extraction from Coal Seam Stimulated by Directional Hydraulic Fracturing

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (21) ◽  
pp. 4720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ge ◽  
Zhang ◽  
Sun ◽  
Hu
Keyword(s):  
Coal Seam ◽  
Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
Hydraulic Fracture ◽  
Scale Model ◽  
Gas Extraction ◽  
Coal Seams ◽  
Directional Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
Coal Mine Methane ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
Fully Coupled

Although numerous studies have tried to explain the mechanism of directional hydraulic fracturing in a coal seam, few of them have been conducted on gas migration stimulated by directional hydraulic fracturing during coal mine methane extraction. In this study, a fully coupled multi-scale model to stimulate gas extraction from a coal seam stimulated by directional hydraulic fracturing was developed and calculated by a finite element approach. The model considers gas flow and heat transfer within the hydraulic fractures, the coal matrix, and cleat system, and it accounts for coal deformation. The model was verified using gas amount data from the NO.8 coal seam at Fengchun mine, Chongqing, Southwest China. Model simulation results show that slots and hydraulic fracture can expand the area of gas pressure drop and decrease the time needed to complete the extraction. The evolution of hydraulic fracture apertures and permeability in coal seams is greatly influenced by the effective stress and coal matrix deformation. A series of sensitivity analyses were performed to investigate the impacts of key factors on gas extraction time of completion. The study shows that hydraulic fracture aperture and the cleat permeability of coal seams play crucial roles in gas extraction from a coal seam stimulated by directional hydraulic fracturing. In addition, the reasonable arrangement of directional boreholes could improve the gas extraction efficiency. A large coal seam dip angle and high temperature help to enhance coal mine methane extraction from the coal seam.

scholarly journals Applications of the fast multipole fully coupled poroelastic displacement discontinuity method to hydraulic fracturing problems

2019 ◽  
Vol 399 ◽  
pp. 108955 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Rezaei ◽  
Fahd Siddiqui ◽  
Giorgio Bornia ◽  
Mohammed Soliman
Keyword(s):  
Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
Displacement Discontinuity ◽  
Displacement Discontinuity Method ◽  
Fast Multipole ◽  
Fully Coupled

Optimizing Recovery for Waterflooding Under Dynamic Induced Fracturing Conditions

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (05) ◽  
pp. 671-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. van den Hoek ◽  
Rashid A. Al-Masfry ◽  
Dirk Zwarts ◽  
Jan-Dirk Jansen ◽  
Bernhard Hustedt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Water Injection ◽  
Injection Rate ◽  
Reservoir Engineering ◽  
Spot Pattern ◽  
Engineering Parameters ◽  
Induced Fractures ◽  
Modeling Strategy ◽  
Reservoir Simulator ◽  
Fully Coupled

Summary It is well established within the industry that water injection mostly takes place under induced fracturing conditions. Particularly in low-mobility reservoirs, large fractures may be induced during the field life. This paper presents a new modeling strategy that combines fluid flow and fracture growth (fully coupled) within the framework of an existing "standard" reservoir simulator. We demonstrate the coupled simulator by applications to repeated five-spot pattern flood models, addressing various aspects that often play an important role in waterfloods: shortcut of injector and producer, fracture containment to the reservoir layer, and areal and vertical reservoir sweep. We also demonstrate how induced fracture dimensions (length, height) can be very sensitive to typical reservoir engineering parameters, such as fluid mobility, mobility ratio, 3D saturation distribution (in particular, shockfront position), 3D temperature distribution, positions of wells (producers, injectors), and geological details (e.g., layering and faulting). In particular, it is shown that lower overall (time-dependent) reservoir transmissibility will result in larger induced fractures. Finally, it is demonstrated how induced fractures can be taken into account to determine an optimum life-cycle injection rate strategy. The results presented in this paper are expected to also apply to (part of) enhanced-oil-recovery operations (e.g., polymer flooding).

Fluid-Filled Fracture Propagation With a Phase-Field Approach and Coupling to a Reservoir Simulator

SPE Journal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (03) ◽  
pp. 0981-0999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Wick ◽  
Gurpreet Singh ◽  
Mary F. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
Phase Field ◽  
Fracture Propagation ◽  
Heterogeneous Material ◽  
Propagation Model ◽  
Coupling Scheme ◽  
Field Approach ◽  
Coupling Approach ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Reservoir Simulator

Summary A quantitative assessment of hydraulic-fracturing jobs relies on accurate predictions of fracture growth during slickwater injection for single and multistage fracturing scenarios. This requires consistent modeling of underlying physical processes, from hydraulic fracturing to long-term production. In this work, we use a recently introduced phase-field approach to model fracture propagation in a porous medium. This approach is thermodynamically consistent and captures several characteristic features of crack propagation such as joining, branching, and nonplanar propagation as a result of heterogeneous material properties. We describe two different phase-field fracture-propagation models and then present a technique for coupling these to a fractured-poroelastic-reservoir simulator. The proposed coupling approach can be adapted to existing reservoir simulators. We present 2D and 3D numerical tests to benchmark, compare, and demonstrate the predictive capabilities of the fracture-propagation model as well as the proposed coupling scheme.

A Fully Coupled 3D Finite Element Simulator for Staged Hydraulic Fracturing in Horizontal Wells

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siwei Meng ◽  
Jinqing Bao ◽  
Chenxu Yang ◽  
Wei Cheng ◽  
Guangming Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Finite Element ◽  
Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
Horizontal Wells ◽  
3D Finite Element ◽  
Element Simulator ◽  
Fully Coupled

Finding the Best of the Best: Hydraulic Fracturing Design Optimization Study in Oman

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rifat Kayumov ◽  
Ahmed Al Shueili ◽  
Musallam Jaboob ◽  
Hussain Al Salmi ◽  
Ricardo Sebastian Trejo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hydraulic Fracturing ◽  
Pressure Gauge ◽  
Design Sensitivity ◽  
Actual Data ◽  
Earth Model ◽  
Reservoir Properties ◽  
Sector Model ◽  
Optimization Study ◽  
Exploration And Production ◽  
Reservoir Simulator

Abstract Development of the tight gas Khazzan Field in Sultanate of Oman has progressed through an extensive learning curve over many years. Thereby, the hydraulic fracturing design was fine-tuned and optimized to properly fit the requirements of the challenging Barik reservoir in this area. In 2018, BP Oman started developing the Barik reservoir in the Ghazeer Field, which naturally extends the reservoir boundary south of Khazzan Field. However, the Barik reservoir in the Ghazeer area is thicker and more permeable than in the Khazzan Field; therefore, the hydraulic fracturing design required adjustment to be optimized to directly reflect the reservoir needs of the Ghazeer Field. A comprehensive hydraulic fracturing design software was used for this optimization study and sensitivity analysis. This software is a plug-in to a benchmark exploration and production software platform and provides a complete fracturing optimization loop from hydraulic fracturing design sensitivity modelled with a calibrated mechanical earth model to detailed production prediction using the incorporated reservoir simulator. One of the stimulated wells from Ghazeer Field was used as the reference for this study. The reservoir sector model was created and adjusted to match actual data from this well. The data include fracturing treatment execution response, surveillance data such as radioactive tracers, bottomhole pressure gauge, and pressure transient analysis. Reservoir properties were also adjusted to match long-term production data obtained for this reference well. After the reservoir model was fully validated against actual data, multiple completion and fracturing scenarios were simulated to estimate potential production gain and thus find an optimal hydraulic fracturing design for Ghazeer Field. Many valuable outcomes can be concluded from this study. The optimal treatment design was identified. The value of fracture half-length versus conductivity was clarified for this area. The comparison between single-stage fracturing versus multistage treatment across the thick laminated Barik reservoir in a conventional vertical well was derived. The drainage of different layers with variable reservoir properties was compared for a range of different scenarios.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document