Using a Calibrated 3D Fracturing Simulator to Optimize Completions of Future Wells in the Eagle Ford Shale

Ejofodomi, Efe; Baihly, Jason; Silva, F.

doi:10.2118/178680-ms

Cited by 14 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Incorporating realistic induced hydraulic fractures in a reservoir model is easier if unstructured grids are used. In recent years, substantial progress has been made in the use of unstructured grid-based reservoir simulation models for describing flow in unconventional reservoirs for both single-well and multiwell cases (Siddiqui et al 2015;Dahl et al 2015aDahl et al , 2015bSchechter 2015a, 2015b;Ejofodomi et al 2015;Pankaj et al 2015).…”

Section: Numerical Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Well Placement Timing and Conductivity Loss on Hydrocarbon Production in Multiple Hydraulically Fractured Horizontal Wells in a Liquids-Rich Shale Play

Siddiqui

Walser

Dusterhoft

2016

SPE Western Regional Meeting

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Horizontal wells in liquids-rich shale plays are now being drilled such that lateral and vertical distances between adjacent wells are significantly reduced. In multistacked reservoirs, fracture height and orientation from geomechanical effects coupled with natural fractures create additional complications; therefore, predicting well performance using numerical simulation becomes challenging. This paper describes numerical simulation results from a three-well pad in a stacked liquids-rich reservoir (containing gas condensates) to understand the interaction between wells and production behavior. This paper discusses the use of an unstructured grid-based numerical simulator that incorporates complicated geometries of both hydraulic and natural fractures. It can handle compositional simulation to better model gas condensates with special focus on timing of third well placement and the loss of conductivity effects on production from these wells. A base case was created with a stacked shale play containing three parallel wells but with staggered elevations. Variables used in this study include matrix permeability, condensate-to-gas ratio (CGR), fracture length, well staggering, time of well placement, conductivity degradation, and presence of natural fractures. Simulation runs were conducted for a five-year duration.More than 20 compositional simulation runs were conducted. For the base case, staggering resulted in a slight decrease in both cumulative oil and gas production compared to a case without staggering. Matrix permeability had the most dominant effect on both oil and gas production. Fracture and matrix conductivity losses were more detrimental to cumulative gas production than oil production. For the limited cases studied, placement of the third well one year after the first two wells began producing resulted in a spike in both oil and gas production from the pad. This produced cumulative oil and gas amount was close to that of three wells producing simultaneously, especially if fracture half-lengths for the third well were the same as the first two. However, cumulative oil and gas production reduced significantly if fracture half-lengths were smaller than the other two wells. When all wells experienced significant conductivity loss, gas production was affected more than oil production when the third well was placed one year after the first two wells began producing. In all cases, placing the third well between the other wells was helpful in increasing overall production from this pad. Natural fractures increased both oil and gas production in the cases studied.This paper addresses important issues associated with a liquids-rich unconventional play. It demonstrates successful use of unstructured grid-based reservoir simulation modeling to address well placement timing, well staggering, conductivity damage effects, natural fractures, hydraulic fractures not perpendicular to the wellbores, and several other important issues for which little is known so far. Results from this study type can be used to make impor...

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Section: Numerical Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Well Placement Timing and Conductivity Loss on Hydrocarbon Production in Multiple Hydraulically Fractured Horizontal Wells in a Liquids-Rich Shale Play

Siddiqui

Walser

Dusterhoft

2016

SPE Western Regional Meeting

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“…The UFM has been integrated into a reservoir-centric software platform that enables the integration of reservoir characterization, geomechanical modeling, microseismic interpretation, and reservoir simulation. (Ejofodomi et al 2014) …”

Section: Unconventional Fracture Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Ash Beds on Production in Eagle Ford Shale

Fisher

Qiu

et al. 2016

Day 3 Thu, February 11, 2016

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The Eagle Ford shale contains both kaolinite-and smectite-rich altered ash beds that present challenges for completion and production. Considering the five Eagle Ford units (A-E), the ash beds occur in the B unit. The B unit is divided into five subunits; B1 and B2 are characterized by the highest total organic carbon (TOC) whereas B3-B5 have a higher frequency of ash beds. The impact of these ash beds is not yet fully understood, but acquired horizontal production log measurements indicate that the production performance of stages landed in the B3-B5 units, with high ash bed frequencies, are poor compared to other stages landed in a different unit. Some operators are vertically staggering laterals to effectively drain the reservoirs, partially due to the lack of vertical connection in the production phase. Thus, to increase the effectiveness of the completion strategy and ultimately the well performance, methods must be developed to quantify the impact of ash beds on production and to mitigate the negative impact. An integrated hydraulic fracture-reservoir modeling workflow was applied on an Eagle Ford shale lateral with part of the lateral crossing an ash bed in B3-B5 units. The subject well was completed with 15 stages. The simulation results demonstrate that the ash beds in B3-B5 units restrict part of the created hydraulic fracture height and create conductivity pinch points, thus reducing the effective fracture height connected to the wellbore. This, in turn, affects the potential well productivity. Based on the simulated results, the optimum lateral landing location is within the B1-B2 interval. The analysis also showed that targeting the hydrocarbons in these units requires a different completion strategy. Use of a crosslinked fluid carrying higher proppant concentrations will facilitate the creation of larger fracture widths to withstand the negative impact of the ash beds isolating a certain portion of the created fracture height.

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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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Using a Calibrated 3D Fracturing Simulator to Optimize Completions of Future Wells in the Eagle Ford Shale

Cited by 14 publications

References 9 publications

Effects of Well Placement Timing and Conductivity Loss on Hydrocarbon Production in Multiple Hydraulically Fractured Horizontal Wells in a Liquids-Rich Shale Play

Effects of Well Placement Timing and Conductivity Loss on Hydrocarbon Production in Multiple Hydraulically Fractured Horizontal Wells in a Liquids-Rich Shale Play

Impact of Ash Beds on Production in Eagle Ford Shale

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

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