Using Microseismicity to Understand Subsurface Fracture Systems and to Optimize Completions: Eagle Ford Shale, TX

Detring, John P.; Grealy, Michael H.

doi:10.15530/urtec-2014-1922814

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Fracture prorogation studies show that fractures growing from adjacent wells tend to attract each other and result in fracture connections [7]. Field microseismic data also show that the phenomenon of fracture connection between adjacent wells is quite common, especially for infill well cases, where there is pressure sink in the formation after the long-time production [8,9]. Production and pressure tests show that the pressure, and gas, and water production of a parent well will dramatically change after the hydraulic fracturing of an adjacent infill well [10][11][12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Semianalytical Model for Analyzing the Infill Well-Caused Fracture Interference from Shale Gas Reservoirs

Fang

Dai

et al. 2021

Geofluids

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Drilling infill well has been widely used in many plays to enhance the recovery of shale gas, but the infill well-caused fracture interference is a very important issue that should be taken into consideration. The well interference makes it difficult for the conventional models to make production predictions, fracture characterization, and production data analysis. In this paper, a semianalytical model is proposed for this purpose by discretizing the whole control volume of the parent and infill wells into several linear flow zones. In this way, three important issues can be further handled very naturally, including fracture connection between the parent and infill wells, different SRV properties for zones with different distances to the wellbore, and different production times for adjacent wellbores. The approximate expressions for different flow regimes are used in making production predictions in the time domain, and a flowing material balance method and a simple iteration are used to update the model parameters step by step. The proposed model is shown to be reasonable and accurate for handling multiwell interference problems after comparing with the commercial numerical simulator tNavigator. The synthetical cases show that the fracture parameters, SRV properties, and well infill time have a significant influence on the production performance of both the parent and infill wells. The results show that the production of the parent well will be dramatically enhanced when it is connected with the infill well via high-conductive hydraulic fractures. Longer unconnected fractures and more fracturing stages/clusters for the infill well will result in higher production for the infill well, but a negative effect is observed for the parent well. The permeability of the distant well SRV has a similar influence on the parent and infill wells. The results also show that late time well interference will result in a more significant increase in production rate on the log-log plots for the severe depletion around the parent well. Finally, the proposed model is used to analyze the production data of a field case from Fuling shale in Southwestern China. After analyzing the production data, several parameters can be obtained for both parent and infill wells, including the fracture lengths and conductivities, numbers of connected fractures, and the near and distant well permeabilities of the SRV. This gives a basic and practical technique for production prediction, formation and fracture evaluation, and well connectivity analysis from shale gas wells with fracture connection.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Semianalytical Model for Analyzing the Infill Well-Caused Fracture Interference from Shale Gas Reservoirs

Fang

Dai

et al. 2021

Geofluids

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“…There have been attempts to use microseismic data alone to guide reservoir simulation (Williams-Stroud, 2008;Du et al, 2009 and2010;Detring and Williams-Stroud, 2012) using a dual porosity/dual permeability approach within the SRV to approximate the hydraulic fracture network or simply by assuming a region of enhanced permeability in the SRV (k srv ). Other approaches include discretely modeling planar hydraulic fractures with half-lengths calibrated to the microseismic data and then adding regions of enhanced permeability or dual porosity/dual permeability around the planar fractures to approximate the fracture network (with dimensions guided by the SRV).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimulated Reservoir Volume: A Misapplied Concept?

2014

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The interpretation of microseismic data was initially focused on hydraulic fracture length and height, providing an important measurement to calibrate planar fracture propagation models. However, microseismic data in the Barnett shale exhibited significantly more complex patterns compared to typical tight-gas sands. The concept of stimulated reservoir volume (SRV) was developed to provide some quantitative measure of stimulation effectiveness in the Barnett shale based on the size of the microseismic "cloud." SRV is now ubiquitous when discussing well performance and stimulation effectiveness in unconventional reservoirs. However, SRV and similar techniques provide little insight into two critical parameters: hydraulic fracture area and conductivity. Each of these can vary significantly based on geologic conditions and fracture treatment design. Hydraulic fracture area and fracture conductivity, combined with reservoir permeability, stress regime, and rock properties, control well performance, not SRV.The concept of SRV has spawned numerous reservoir engineering models to approximate the production mechanisms associated with complex hydraulic fractures and to facilitate production modeling and well performance evaluations (e.g., rate transient analysis). However, these reservoir engineering models are often divorced from the fracture mechanics that created the fracture network, a significant limitation when evaluating completion effectiveness. Additionally, the interpretation of the microseismic data and the calculation of SRV are poorly linked to the actual hydraulic fracture geometry and distribution of fracture conductivity. This paper presents detailed numerical reservoir simulations coupled with hydraulic fracture modeling that illustrates the limitations and potential misapplications of the SRV concept. This work shows that simplifying assumptions in many SRVbased rate transient models may lead to estimates of hydraulic fracture length and reservoir permeability that are not well suited for completion optimization. Two case histories are presented that illustrate the limitations of SRV-based well performance evaluations. The paper concludes that using microseismic images to estimate a SRV may not be sufficient for completion evaluation and optimization. However, the simple calculation of microseismic volume (MV) can provide significant insights to guide fracture and reservoir modeling endeavors.

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Seeking real value: Quantitative estimation of permeability enhancement, production volumes, and drainage area from microseismic data

Kashikar

Shojaei

Duncan

2016

SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts 2016

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Using Microseismicity to Understand Subsurface Fracture Systems and to Optimize Completions: Eagle Ford Shale, TX

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

A Semianalytical Model for Analyzing the Infill Well-Caused Fracture Interference from Shale Gas Reservoirs

A Semianalytical Model for Analyzing the Infill Well-Caused Fracture Interference from Shale Gas Reservoirs

Stimulated Reservoir Volume: A Misapplied Concept?

Seeking real value: Quantitative estimation of permeability enhancement, production volumes, and drainage area from microseismic data

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