Development and Testing of Advanced Inter-Well Pressure Pulse Analysis for Fracture Diagnostics in Tight Gas Reservoirs

摘要

Unconventional gas reservoirs constitute a major component of U. S. gas production. Tight gas reservoirs are an important part of this unconventional gas production. The common completion technique for horizontal wells in shale gas reservoirs is hydraulic fracturing in multi-stages. A novel technique was developed to monitor and characterize hydraulic fractures through the analysis of pressure pulse data recorded at offset wells before, during, and after horizontal well fracture operations in tight gas reservoirs. Two methodologies were defined and tested to characterize fracture orientation for single vertical fractures. The first methodology encompasses pressure pulse response before and after hydraulic fracturing, and the second involves using type curves that match a pressure pulse response after an existing hydraulic fracture was created. Based on the analytical and numerical results, preliminary families of type curves were generated for different well pair spacing and orientation of the fracture plane. Field data was applied for calibration and validation and an inversion technique was used to match the numerical results with field observations. Results indicated a successful fracture characterization with a reasonable cost-effective technique correlation between the numerical model and the field case.