Optimizing Production of Tight Gas Wells by Revolutionizing Hydraulic Fracturing

Abstract

Tight gas wells are the wells having low permeability and the production of gas from these tight formations is the key issue in the industry. This paper includes the calculations, simulation work and enhanced engineering work to increase productivity along with the case studies. Hydraulic Fracturing is usually conducted to resolve these kinds of situations. But the productivity can shoot up to 45-55%. It is done by revolutionizing the conventional hydraulic frzcturing through flow channel creation by enhancing proppant qualities like its strength and roundness, by lowering its crush and gel loading and improving gel breakers. Perforations are engineered and pumping technique and perforation strategy are combined causing channel formation. The combination of enhanced conductivity and effective fracture half length enables greater hydrocarbon recovery. Instead of flowing through proppant pack hydrocarbon flow through the channels created by proppant pillars giving effectively infinite conductivity and better fluids and polymer recovery and less fracture face damage. Via these techniques traditional losses in proppant pack conductivity from crushing, fines, fluid damage multiphase flow and non-darcy effects are eliminated meaning optimized production.

DEM-CFD Modeling of Proppant Pillar Deformation and Stability during the Fracturing Fluid Flowback

“…As a result, the conductivities measured in the numerical models could be largely dropped due to the occupancy of particles in the fluid channels. The field tests with channel fracturing shows the increase of oil/gas production [3][4][5] compared with the traditional proppant placement scheme, but the improvement is much less remarkable than the experimental results by Gillard et al [1] and Nguyen et al [31]. Due to the flowback of proppant particles, the proppant particles move into the channels between pillars, which results in the single layer or a few layers of proppant particles between pillars (Figure 21).…”

“…The void space between proppant pillars form the fluid channels which greatly improve the fracture conductivity during the production [2]. An investigation based on the results of more than 1000 times channel fracturing found that more than 99.9% of the channel-fracturing jobs fully completed the proppant placement and by average channel fracturing could save 43% of the proppant compared with the conventional technique implemented in adjacent wells [3,4]. The oil production with channel fracturing could also be greatly enhanced.…”