Optimum Fracture Treatment Design Minimizes the Impact of Non-Darcy Flow 
Effects

Lopez-Hernandez, H. D.; Pham, Tài

doi:10.2523/90195-ms

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Wang and Economides 8 showed how the UFD approach can be applied to gas wells, especially in high-permeability reservoirs, where fracturing is the most appropriate way to slash non-Darcy effects. Lopez-Hernandez et al 9 applied the methodology to compensate for non-Darcy effects in the fracture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic and Physical Optimization of Hydraulic Fracturing

Marongiu-Porcu

Economides

Holditch

2008

SPE International Symposium and Exhibition on Formation Damage Control

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Optimization has taken several different hues in all areas of engineering. Hydraulic fracturing, as applied to petroleum wells, has had its share. In the past, and before the maturing of high-permeability fracturing and the tip screen out techniques, this well stimulation procedure was limited to low-permeability reservoirs and unrestricted fracturing. In such cases, the fracture length would be an appropriate design optimization variable against an economic criterion, e.g., the Net Present Value (NPV). This involved the balancing of incremental future revenue against the cost of execution. Also interesting are parametric studies, allowing the variation of execution variables and the detection of differences in their respective design NPV. Such differences would be useful in decisions to measure a variable or stay within reasonable assumptions. The emergence of higher-permeability fracturing and the Unified Fracture Design (UFD) concept allowed two important notions. First, there is no difference between low and high-permeability reservoirs in terms of benefiting for fracturing. Just execution issues need to be resolved. Second, and more important, for any mass of proppant to be injected in any well, there exists only one fracture geometry that would maximize production. This geometry, consisting of length and propped width (with height as a parasitic variable) can be readily determined and, if placed, it will provide the maximum productivity index. All other configurations would result in lower productivity values. This is physical optimization.In this paper we combine the two: the economic and physical. For each proppant mass we first optimize the fracture physically and then we apply the NPV criterion. We perform a series of parametric studies for a range of reservoirs and we use economic variables that differ in various parts of the world. We show how to determine the optimum fracture size. We then show how fracture treatments may be attractive in certain reservoirs in mature areas but not attractive elsewhere. We also show that for a diversified company, given the choice, few successful fractures in high-permeability reservoirs are far preferable to fracturing large numbers of wells in lower permeability fields, although the latter can be made economically attractive only through hydraulic fracturing.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic and Physical Optimization of Hydraulic Fracturing

Marongiu-Porcu

Economides

Holditch

2008

SPE International Symposium and Exhibition on Formation Damage Control

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“…Here, the square is approximated by a circle of radius, r e , with the same area as the square. As such, π / e e x r = (5) If, instead, the well drainage area, A, is known, then π A r e = (8) where f is defined by Cinco-Ley and Samaniego, 7 ,8 as…”

Section: Unified Fracture Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently there has been increased attention to the UFD 1 approach to hydraulic fracture design. 2,3,4,5 By providing the fracture length and conductivity that will maximize well productivity given the size of the well drainage volume, reservoir and fluid properties, and the amount to be invested in the proppant, UFD has encouraged operators to invest in high value hydraulic fracture treatments. Although most of the treatment cost is in the mass of proppant injected, the ultimate well productivity improvement depends on the job execution.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pressure Transient and Production Data Analysis for Hydraulic Fracture Treatment Evaluation

Ehlig-Economides¹,

Diyashev²,

Ayeni³

et al. 2006

Proceedings of SPE Russian Oil and Gas Technical Conference and Exhibition

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TX 75083-3836 U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractThe Unified Fracture Design (UFD) concept provides a mechanism to determine the optimal hydraulic fracture design for a given amount of a selected proppant, while modern hydraulic fracture treatment execution offers the potential to achieve the optimal design. The proppant number is a ratio of the proppant permeability and proppant volume product to the formation permeability and reservoir volume product. The cost of the hydraulic fracture treatment is directly related to quality and quantity of proppant injected, and successful achievement of the optimal fracture treatment easily offsets this cost when appropriate economics is considered in the job design. Pressure transient and production data analysis are described in terms of fracture length and conductivity and do not provide measures of UFD parameters. The subject of this paper is the use of post treatment analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment in terms of dimensionless productivity index, dimensionless fracture conductivity, and the proppant number.Results of this analysis show that when conventional buildup tests cannot provide the desired post-treatment analysis, in most cases, production data analysis can, and vice versa. The analysis will address both single phase oil and gas primary production and oil production under pressure maintenance or waterflood. Also, non-ideal fractures with height growth beyond the producing formation thickness and fracture skin will be considered. Field examples will illustrate the analysis. The importance of this analysis is paramount for operators trying to optimize high value hydraulic fracture treatments.

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“…A list of the correlations can be found in LopezHernandez [20]. Once again, the prediction of the Forchheimer coefficient varies significantly from one correlation to the other (Fig.…”

Section: Fluid Flow Along a Perforation Tunnelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Needs to Incorporate Completion Details in a Petroleum Reservoir Simulation Model

Ouyang¹

2015

TOPEJ

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Most of the current research and commercial reservoir simulators lack the capability to handle complex completion details like perforation tunnels in a simulation study. In most common applications, the simplified handling of completion complexity in reservoir simulations is not expected to introduce significant error in simulation results. However, it has been found that under certain circumstances, especially in high rate wells that have become more and more common in deepwater oil and profilic gas development, exclusion of the complex completion details in a reservoir simulation model would lead to nontrivial errors. New equations have been proposed to assess the needs to incorporate completion details in a reservoir simulation study based on the understanding of the fluid flow in a formation, the fluid flow along a wellbore and the fluid flow through perforation tunnels if exist. A series of sensitivity studies with different completion options under different flow and reservoir environments has been conducted to provide some guidance to improve well performance prediction through reservoir simulation. Impacts of key parameters like perforation density, perforation diameter, perforation length, wellbore length, borehole diameter, well completion configuration, well placement, reservoir permeability, reservoir heterogeneity, pressure drawdown, etc, have also been investigated.

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Optimum Fracture Treatment Design Minimizes the Impact of Non-Darcy Flow Effects

Cited by 13 publications

References 27 publications

Economic and Physical Optimization of Hydraulic Fracturing

Economic and Physical Optimization of Hydraulic Fracturing

Pressure Transient and Production Data Analysis for Hydraulic Fracture Treatment Evaluation

Assessing the Needs to Incorporate Completion Details in a Petroleum Reservoir Simulation Model

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