Imbibition and Water Blockage In Unconventional Reservoirs: Well-Management Implications During Flowback and Early Production

Bertoncello, Antoine; Wallace, Jon; Blyton, Chris; Honarpour, M.M.; Kabir, Shah

doi:10.2118/167698-pa

Cited by 150 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…10 shows the simulation results that the water imbibition through well shut-in can reduce the water saturation beside the fracture Table 2. The evaluated and predicated performance of 10 fractured wells in Niobrara shale oil play (Yuan et al, 2016a after hydraulic fracturing, which will benefit the production (Bertoncello et al, 2014). Spontaneous imbibition conducts different influence to gas production.…”

Section: Gas Recovery By Spontaneous Imbibitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review on gas flow and recovery in unconventional porous rocks

Lin

Wang

Yuan

et al. 2017

Adv. Geo-Energ. Res.

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This study summarizes gas flow process in unconventional porous rocks, including the transportation in tight or shale reservoirs and the spontaneous imbibition happened in them. Fluids flow is greatly affected by the pore structure together with the pore size distribution of porous media. The MRI and BET measurement show peaks in pore throat radius ranging from 2 to 20 nm, whereas the diameter for methane and helium are 0.38 and 0.26 nm, respectively. Yet for different types of reservoir, distinct mechanisms should be utilized based on the flow regimes. Besides, experimental measurement techniques for conventional reservoirs are no long accurate enough for most of the unconventional reservoirs. New attempts have been implemented to obtain more valuable data for accurate reservoir prediction. By reviewing large numbers of articles, a clear and comprehensive map on the gas flow and recovery in unconventional reservoirs is made. Factors influencing the gas flow and recovery are investigated in detail for mathematical simulation process. Reservoir conditions and the sweep efficiency play an important role during gas production process. Besides, adsorbed gas contributes a lot to the total gas recovery. The overall investigations suggest that many parameters that influence the gas flow in unconventional porous rocks should be taken into consideration during the evaluation. Among them, permeability, adsorbed gas dynamics, stimulated reservoir volume as well as the unstimulated reservoir volume, and imbibition effect are the most important ones. This study provides valuable data and reasonable exploitations for characterizing gas flow and recovery in unconventional porous rocks.

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Section: Gas Recovery By Spontaneous Imbibitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review on gas flow and recovery in unconventional porous rocks

Lin

Wang

Yuan

et al. 2017

Adv. Geo-Energ. Res.

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“…Roychaudhuri et al (2011) pointed out that, on the basis of shale gas reservoir development practices, a shale gas well has a high yield at low flowback rate; this phenomenon is closely related to SI in reservoirs. Bertoncello et al (2014) found that SI is strongly related to fluid loss in reservoirs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spontaneous imbibition in asymmetric branch-like throat structures in unconventional reservoirs

Shen

et al. 2017

Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering

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a b s t r a c tUnconventional reservoirs, especially shale plays, have abundant micro-nano pores. Large volume water was injected into the reservoir during hydraulic fracturing. Fracturing fluid can displace gas in pore spaces spontaneously, called spontaneous imbibition (SI), which has significant effects on the gas production after hydraulic fracturing. Throat structure in matrix is one of the key factors to influence SI process. In this work, at first, complex pore space is simplified as a spatial self-similar branch-like structure composed of several asymmetric sub-throats. Then, within asymmetric branch structure, the imbibition process is calculated by a newly established mathematical model, and the influence of both pore structure and fluid characteristics, including contract angle, viscosity, surface tension, are discussed. Finally, some lab experiments, especially SI tests, are included on shale and sandstone core plugs to verify our model. Results show that the coherence in wettability between the reservoir and the fracturing fluid is important to enhance the microscopic replacement effect. Pore size also has effect influence on imbibition curve. In addition, both in models and experiments, imbibition index n is useful to describe imbibition properties of rocks. In unconventional rock samples like shale, n is less than 0.4, while highpermeability sandstone, n approach to 0.5. These conclusions are useful to investigate the mechanism of spontaneous imbibition and microscopic displacement in unconventional reservoirs.

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“…10,11 The mechanism of water transport into formation matrix and modeling remains difficult to explain in unconventional formation, although the interaction between fracturing fluids and formation has been extensively studied 12,13 in recent years given the specific characteristics of unconventional formation, such as ultralow permeability, strong heterogeneity, and complex mineral composition. [14][15][16][17] Spontaneous imbibition is a dominant mechanism of water transport into formation considering the high capillary pressure in nanopores. [18][19][20][21] A research development of spontaneous imbibition is summarized systematically, and the main models include Lucas-Washburn, Terzaghi, Handy, Mattax and Kyte, and Aronofsky.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spontaneous Imbibition Process in Micro–nano Fractal Capillaries Considering Slip Flow

Shen

et al. 2018

Fractals

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An imbibition process of water into a matrix is required to investigate the influences of large-volume fracturing fluids on gas production of unconventional formations. Slip flow has been recognized by recent studies as a major mechanism of fluid transport in nanotubes. For nanopores in shale, a slip boundary is nonnegligible in the imbibition process. In this study, we established an analytic equation of spontaneous imbibition considering slip effects in capillaries. A spontaneous imbibition model that couples the analytic equation considering the slip effect was constructed based on fractal theory. We then used a model for various conditions, such as slip boundary, pore structure, and fractal dimension of pore tortuosity, to capture the imbibition characteristics considering the slip effect. A dynamic contact angle was integrated into the modeling. Results of our study verify that the slip boundary influences water imbibition significantly. The imbibition speed is significantly improved when slip length reaches the equivalent diameter of a tube. Therefore, disregarding the slip effect will underestimate the imbibition speed in shale samples.

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Imbibition and Water Blockage In Unconventional Reservoirs: Well-Management Implications During Flowback and Early Production

Cited by 150 publications

References 14 publications

Review on gas flow and recovery in unconventional porous rocks

Review on gas flow and recovery in unconventional porous rocks

Spontaneous imbibition in asymmetric branch-like throat structures in unconventional reservoirs

Spontaneous Imbibition Process in Micro–nano Fractal Capillaries Considering Slip Flow

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