Case History of Horizontal Well Fracturing Performance in the Daqing Oilfield, China

Abstract

The Daqing Oilfield, a huge complex consisting of many individual oil fields, is located in the Songliao basin in northeastern China. As reservoir development continues, the target zones become thinner and tighter. Horizontal well completion and fracture stimulation have thus become applicable. To understand fracture growth behavior and well performance, fracture diagnostic techniques, such as temperature logging and microseismic monitoring, as well as fracture modeling have been performed. The case history in this paper involves fracture treatments in several horizontal wells to target tight oil reservoirs in the Daqing Oilfield. Fracture diagnostic results for one horizontal well indicated that longitudinal fractures were obtained as planned. However, fracture diagnostic results in other horizontal wells in different reservoirs showed that the fracture orientation was off significantly from the designed longitudinal fractures. Several fracture models were calibrated using the fracture diagnostic results. The fracture diagnostic and modeling results were used to optimize fracture design for subsequent well stimulation. This case history demonstrated that integrated studies can help engineers optimize well performance.