Numerical study of hydraulic fracturing in the sectorial well-factory considering well interference and stress shadowing

In the Changqing Oilfield in northwest China, when traditional petroleum exploitation encounters forestry reserves or water source protection areas, sectorial well-factory design is proposed. The most distinct feature of a sectorial well-factory is the deviation of the well from the minimum horizontal principal stress, resulting in hydraulic fracture deflection after the initiation, along with possible well interference (i.e., fracture hit) and fracture coalescence in the oblique wells. Four indexes describing well deflection are then proposed according to fracture morphology. Several fracturing designs, including stage arrangement, fracturing sequences, and fracturing techniques are applied to study the feasibility of the sectorial well-factory design. The results show that the “gradual” or “sparse” stage arrangement, large injection rate, and simultaneous multifracture treatment can help to optimize the fracture morphology and stimulation design. However, the subsequent stress shadowing effect usually adversely affects the fracturing of adjacent wells. With a small initial horizontal stress difference, large injection rate and staggered stage arrangement can achieve ideal stimulation performance. Our results can provide a guidance for optimizing stimulation design in unconventional well-factory while taking into account environmental protection.

Well interference evaluation considering complex fracture networks through pressure and rate transient analysis in unconventional reservoirs

Severe well interference through complex fracture networks(CFNs)can be observed among multi-well pads in low permeability reservoirs.The well interference analysis between multi-fractured horizontal wells(MFHWs)is vitally important for reservoir effective development.Well interference has been historically investigated by pressure transient analysis,while it has shown that rate transient analysis has great potential in well interference diagnosis.However,the impact of complex fracture networks(CFNs)on rate transient behavior of parent well and child well in unconventional reservoirs is still not clear.To further investigate,this paper develops an integrated approach combining pressure and rate transient analysis for well interference diagnosis considering CFNs.To perform multi-well simulation considering CFNs,non-intrusive embedded discrete fracture model approach was applied for coupling fracture with reservoir models.The impact of CFN including natural fractures and frac-hits on pressure and rate transient behavior in multi-well system was investigated.On a logelog plot,interference flow and compound linear flow are two new flow regimes caused by nearby producers.When both NFs and frac-hits are present in the reservoir,frac-hits have a greater impact on well#1 which contains frac-hits,and NFs have greater impact on well#3 which does not have frac-hits.For all well producing circumstances,it might be challenging to see divergence during pseudosteady state flow brought on by frac-hits on the logelog plot.Besides,when NFs occur,reservoir depletion becomes noticeable in comparison to frac-hits in pressure distribution.Application of this integrated approach demonstrates that it works well to characterize the well interference among different multi-fractured horizontal wells in a well pad.Better reservoir evaluation can be acquired based on the new features observed in the novel model,demonstrating the practicability of the proposed approach.The findings of this study can help for better evaluating well interference degree in multi-well systems combing PTA and RTA,which can reduce the uncertainty and improve the accuracy of the well interference analysis based on both field pressure and rate data.

Horizontal Well Interference Performance and Water Injection Huff and Puff Effect on Well Groups with Complex Fracture Networks:A Numerical Study

Well interference has become a common phenomenon with the increasing scale of horizontal well fracturing.Recent studies on well interference in horizontal wells do not properly reflect the physical model of the postfracturing well groups and the realistic fracturing process of infill wells.Establishing the correspondence between well interference causative factors and manifestations is of great significance for infill well deployment and secondary oil recovery.In this work,we develop a numerical model that considers low velocity non-Darcy seepage inshale reservoirs to study the inter-well interferencephenomenon that occurs in theSantanghufield,andconstruct an explicit hydraulic fracture and complex natural fracture network model with an embedded discrete fracture model,focusing on the effect of fracture network morphology on well interactions.The model also considers a multi-segment wellbore model to accommodate the effect of inter-well crossflow on wellbore tubular flow.The changes in formation pressure and water saturation during fracturing are performed by controlling the injection pressure and water injection rate.The result shows that the shape of the fracture network generated by the infill well with the old well determines the subsequent fluid and oil-increasing performance of the disturbed well.The synergistic production or competitive relationship formed by fractures with different connectivity between the two wells determines the positive and negative effects of the interference.The paper also investigates the adaptation study of water injection huff and puff schemes for well groups with different connectivity,and demonstrated a potential yield increase of up to 10.85%under adaptation injection.This method of identifying well interference based on the production dynamics of affected wells and the subsequent corresponding water injection method provides valuable references for the selection of secondary oil recovery measures.

A novel production data analysis method for multi-fractured horizontal wells with infill well-caused fracture interference

Tightening the well spacing for unconventional tight reservoirs is an efficient technique to enhance oil and gas recoveries.Infill well-caused fracture connection between wells is widely reported in the field with small well spacing.This will make it difficult to make formation evaluation and fracture characterization between wells compared to single well cases.In this paper,a novel production data analysis(PDA)method is proposed for fracture characterization with the consideration of interwell fracture connections after the hydraulic fracturing of the infill.The PDA method is based on a semianalytical model,in which the small-scaled fractures are treated with the concept of stimulated reservoir volume(SRV).Thus,the fracture connections between wells are classified into three types,including SRV,fractures,and both SRV and fractures.The physical model is discretized into several linear flow regions,so the mathematical model can be solved semianalytically.An integrated workflow is proposed to analyze the production data for the wellpad,and three steps are mainly included in the workflow,including PDA for the parent well before infill,PDA for the parent well after infill,and PDA for the infill well.In each step,the production performance in the early linear and bilinear flow regimes are analyzed with approximate solutions in the square and fourth root-of-time plots.Because only the relationship between unknown model parameters can be obtained with the approximate solutions,history matching to the production data in log-log plots is further used to determine each unknown parameter.The PDA method is benchmarked with a synthetic case generated by the numerical simulator tNavigator and a field case from Southwestern China.The results show that both good matches and precise parameters can be obtained with the proposed PDA method.The connected fracture number will not be sensitive in PDA when the wells are connected with high-conductive dSRV.The innovation of this paper is that a practical method is provided for PDA analysis of well groups with fracture connection,and it will be a good technique for fracture characterization and well-interference analysis for tight formations.