Title: Comprehensive prediction of dynamic fracture width for formation damage control in fractured tight gas reservoir

Authors: Yili Kang; Chengyuan Xu; Lijun You; Long Tang; Zhanghua Lian

Addresses: State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, 610500 Chengdu, China ' State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, 610500 Chengdu, China ' State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, 610500 Chengdu, China ' State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, 610500 Chengdu, China ' State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, 610500 Chengdu, China

Abstract: Developed fractures are beneficial for the economic and efficient development of tight gas reservoir. But they will lead to drill-in fluid loss and induce serious formation damage. Fracture width prediction is the key for reasonable selection of particle size distribution to prevent drill-in fluid loss and control formation damage in fractured tight gas reservoir. However, the reservoir fracture width is not constant but changed with effective stress variation induced by drill-in fluid invasion, which make it more difficult for fracture width prediction. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive method to predict the reservoir dynamic fracture width. This method is based on stress-dependent permeability experiment and finite element simulation which are conducted to determine the in-situ fracture width and dynamic fracture width. The in-situ width is used as the initial condition for the simulation. According to the experiment and simulation results for North-Western Sichuan tight gas reservoir, the in-situ fracture width is 3.28-18.59 µm and the dynamic fracture width is 17.89-763 µm. Based on the dynamic fracture width prediction, reasonable particle size distribution can be designed to prevent drill-in loss and control formation damage effectively. [Received: January 27, 2014; Accepted: September 20, 2014]

Keywords: fractured tight gas reservoirs; formation damage; dynamic fracture width; prediction; drill-in fluid loss; stress-dependent permeability; finite element method; FEM; simulation; particle size distribution; China.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2015.069014

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2015 Vol.9 No.3, pp.296 - 310

Received: 29 Jan 2014
Accepted: 20 Sep 2014
Published online: 24 Apr 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article