Semi-Analytical Model for Two-Phase Flowback in Complex Fracture Networks in Shale Oil Reservoirs

Yuzhe Cai and Arash Dahi Taleghani
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Yuzhe Cai: Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16801, USA
Arash Dahi Taleghani: Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16801, USA

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-26

Abstract: Flowback data is the earliest available data for estimating fracture geometries and the assessment of different fracturing techniques. Considerable attention has been paid recently to analyze flowback data quantitively in order to obtain fracture properties such as effective half-length and effective conductivity by simply assuming fractures having bi-wing planar geometries and constant fracture compressibility. However, this simplifying assumption ignores the complexity of fracture networks. To overcome this limitation, we proposed a semi-analytical method, which can be used as a direct model for fast inverse analysis to characterize complex fracture networks generated during hydraulic fracturing. A two-phase oil–water flowback model with a matrix oil influx for wells with bi-wing planar fractures is also presented to identify limitations of the former solution. Since most available flowback studies use constant fracture properties and the assumption of planar fractures, considering variable fracture properties and complex fracture geometries gives this model more robustness for modeling fracture flow during flowback, more realistically. The proposed models have been validated by numerical simulations. The presented procedure provides a simple way for modeling early flowback in complex fracture networks and it can be used for inverse analysis.

Keywords: flowback; complex fracture network; shale oil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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