Modeling Interwell Fracture Interference and Huff-N-Puff Pressure Containment in Eagle Ford Using EDFM

Abstract

First, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my academic supervisor Dr. Sepehrnoori for the continuous guidance and support during these two years of graduate school. I am truly grateful for his interest and willingness to guide me since the very first day of my graduate studies. I would also like to express sincere gratefulness to Dr. Wei Yu for his dedication, expertise advises, and insistent valuable guidance. I will always appreciate how he shared part of his extensive expertise in unconventional reservoirs, and reservoir modeling with me. Also, I would like to thank Erich Kerr and his company for supplying the field data that made this research possible. I gained great practice and understanding through their suggestions for my research work. Their invaluable support received weekly through my entire career will always be appreciated. There are not enough words to express how convinced I am that this would not have been possible without the support of my family. I thank my father Mario and my mother María for covering part of my tuition, and also my sister Carla Adriana for their continuous encouragement to pursue my dreams. I would like to thank Carolina for her caring love and support. I am indebted to my parents, my sister and my girlfriend who never stopped encouraging during both the good and the not so good times. I would also like to thank Reza, Sutthaporn, Fabio, Jorge, and Esmail for their collaboration and assertive comments for my work and my research. Finally, a very special acknowledgment is extended to the Fulbright Commission of Ecuador, the Department of State of the United States, and the Cockrell School of Engineering for being the sponsoring entities which provided me the scholarships to fund and make this accomplishment possible.

Huff-n-Puff Technology for Enhanced Oil Recovery in Shale/Tight Oil Reservoirs: Progress, Gaps, and Perspectives

“…Regarding the impact of frac-hits on the potential gas H-n-P operation, a complicated natural fracture network could either make the solvent challenging to inject, because of the limited connected natural fractures (limited SRV), or cause the injected gas to leak out through the nearby well, because of linking natural cracks between wells. Some investigators have already adjusted the natural crack properties to fit the field performance condition, provided the solution, and produced a more realistic H-n-P gas EOR simulation prediction based on multipad wellbore image logging obtained from field production data . In unconventional reservoirs, gas is stored as a free phase in mineral pores and natural cracks, and also some stored on the pore surface (absorbed gas) .…”

“…While numerous experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the presence of well interference, only a few models have used H-n-P, which is an approach to simplify more man-made fracturing designs to optimize the productivity of EOR. Therefore, Fiallos Torres et al . used a systematic workflow to estimate the effects of spatial differences in crack conductivity and complexity on fracture geometries.…”

Investigating Enhanced Oil Recovery in Unconventional Reservoirs Based on Field Case Review, Laboratory, and Simulation Studies

“…Based on a detailed literature survey and communications with field operators, 24 EOR pilot tests performed in North American unconventional plays were identified. The EOR-related data was collected from a variety of sources, including publications and governmental databases available through the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC), Texas Railroad Commission (TRC), and oil and gas companies. ,− General information on these 24 pilot tests is summarized in Tables and .…”

“…These tests showed that fluid injectivity in unconventional reservoirs may not be an issue because of the existing fractures in the formations. However, the conformance issues caused by hydraulic fractures and the interconnected fracture network within the stimulated reservoir volume were the main challenges to achieving a significant EOR response in most of the pilot tests. − …”

“…only marginal or little incremental oil production was observed in the field after performing EOR operations). Conformance issues caused by well interference were identified as one of the most critical challenges in the gas injection process due to the massively interconnected fractures between wells. − …”