In this paper, a
series of fracture conductivity experiments were
designed and conducted by an American Petroleum Institute (API) standard
fracture conductivity evaluation system. The mixing proportion of
quartz sand and ceramic was optimized. By the evaluation of the proppant
breakage rate and sphericity analysis of mixed proppant with different
sand volume proportions (
P
S
), the proppant
mixture conductivity evolution behavior was analyzed. Results of this
study showed that the conductivity of mixed proppant was between that
of pure ceramic proppant and pure quartz sand proppant under the same
conditions. For 20/40 mesh mixed proppant, a small amount of ceramic
(25%) in mixed proppant could obtain 1.27–3 times higher conductivity
than pure sand, while 40/70 mesh mixed proppant required the addition
of 50% or more ceramic. The crushing resistance of mixed proppant
determined the decrease of conductivity with the increase of effective
closure stresses. A logarithmic empirical model was further derived
from the results, which could be used to forecast the performance
of fracture conductivity at different effective closure stresses and
sand volume proportions.
Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing can effectively increase the contact area between fractures and reservoir, which are important method to realize the economic and efficient development of unconventional reservoirs. In the traditional fracturing scheme design, “sweet spots” guide the fracturing construction. However, due to lack of the interaction process of using engineering data to validate and correct the original data until the final convergence with reality, it cannot be dynamically optimized and matched in time. To overcome above shortcomings, this paper proposes a new network fracturing scheme design workflow based on the integrated geological-engineering integration (GEI) method. The tight carbonate reservoir X layer of oil field A in the Middle East is set as a case. A comprehensive sweet spot evaluation method is established using the partial correlation coefficient analysis method, considering the physical properties and fracturing performance of reservoir. The comprehensive sweet spot model is calibrated and optimized using experimental data, stimulation parameters, well tests, and production data. Based on the comprehensive sweet spot model, the quadrant chart is plotted and varied single well fracturing scheme designs are implemented for different quadrant areas. The numerical simulation results show that it can improve the development efficiency of unconventional reservoirs.
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