Hydraulic fractures productivity performance in tight gas sands—a numerical simulation approach
Jakov Ostojic A , Reza Rezaee A and Hassan Bahrami ACurtin University of Technology
The APPEA Journal 51(1) 519-526 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ10035
Published: 2011
Abstract
The increasing global demand for energy along with the reduction in conventional gas reserves has lead to the increasing demand and exploration of unconventional gas sources. Hydraulically-fractured tight gas reservoirs are one of the most common unconventional sources being produced today and look to be a regular source of gas in the future. Hydraulic fracture orientation and spacing are important factors in effective field drainage and gas recovery.
This paper presents a 3D single well hydraulically fractured tight gas model created using commercial simulation software, which will be used to simulate gas production and synthetically generate welltest data. The hydraulic fractures will be simulated with varying sizes and different numbers of fractures intersecting the wellbore. The focus of the simulation runs will be on the effect of hydraulic fracture size and spacing on well productivity performance.
The results obtained from the welltest simulations will be plotted and used to understand the impact on reservoir response under the different hydraulic fracturing scenarios. The outputs of the models can also be used to relate welltest response to the efficiency of hydraulic fractures and, therefore, productivity performance.
Jakov Ostojic is a Masters candidate with the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. Prior to enrolling in the Master’s course at Curtin University he completed his Bachelor’s degree in Petroleum Engineering at the University of Western Australia. His present focus is on tight gas reservoirs production performance. Jakov.Ostojic@postgrad.curtin.edu.au |
Reza Rezaee is an associate professor at Curtin’s Department of Petroleum Engineering and has a PhD in reservoir characterisation. He has more than 20 years experience in academia and industry. During his career he has been engaged in several research projects supported by national and international oil companies. These commissions, together with his supervisory work at various universities, have involved a wide range of achievements. He has supervised more than 50 MSc and PhD students during his university career to date. His research has been focused on integrated solutions for reservoir characterisation, formation evaluation and petrophysics. He has used expert systems such as artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic, and has introduced several new approaches to estimate rock properties from log data where conventional methods failed to succeed. He is presently focused on unconventional gas including gas shale and tight gas sand studies, and is the lead scientist for the WA:ERA (EIS) Tight Gas and shale gas research projects. R.Rezaee@curtin.edu.au |
Hassan is a PhD candidate in the department of petroleum engineering at Curtin University, Perth. He has focused on tight gas sand reservoirs damage and productivity. Prior to Curtin University, he worked for Schlumberger Data and Consulting Services (DCS) as borehole reservoir engineer (2003–9) and Tehran Energy Consultants as Reservoir Engineer (2001–3). Hassan holds a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Persian Gulf University, and a Master of Science in reservoir engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Hassan.Bahrami@postgrad.curtin.edu.au |
