The success in producing from unconventional reservoirs is made possible by horizontal drilling and reservoir stimulation through multi-stage hydraulic fracturing along the laterals. Although hydraulic fracturing techniques have been widely used for unconventional shale gas stimulation, a considerable percentage of perforations do not contribute to production. Reservoir characterization and computation of completion parameters are essential for effective completion design to improve staging and perforation placement.
Challenges in hydraulic fracture design are the proper placement of fracturing ports or perforations and location of isolation packers due to the large variability of fracture gradient, mechanical and reservoir properties, and petrophysical characteristics existing along the lateral. Industry experiences show that injection pressures required to fracture the formation (fracture gradient) oftentimes vary significantly along a well, and there can be intervals where the formation cannot be fractured successfully by fluid injection due to the existence of high in-situ stress.
Geomechanical and Petrophysical evaluations providing rock anisotropy and anisotropic stress properties along the wellbore play a fundamental role in completion and hydraulic fracture design. In this paper, geomechanical and petrophysical properties from open-hole logs and sonic anisotropy evaluations have been integrated to compute reservoir quality and completion quality. Intervals with similar properties are then grouped in a manner to better understand and optimize hydraulic fracture design and operations. This procedure is applied in a borehole within a potential shale-gas reservoir targeting the hot shale facies formation in Saudi Arabia resulting in a successful completion optimization and hydraulic fracture performance.
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