Determination of Performance of Multiple-Fracture Horizontal Well by Incorporating Fracture-Fluid Leakoff

Abstract

Summary Multiple-fracture-horizontal-well (MFHW) technology plays a crucial role in production from less economically attractive reservoirs, through enhancing the well productivity. The formation around the fracture might be damaged considerably during fracturing processes because of the fracture-fluid leakoff into the reservoir. Different attempts have been made to achieve an optimal design for MFHWs; however, the effect of fracture-fluid leakoff has been neglected in most of these research investigations, leading to unrealistic and inaccurate results. This study aims to fill this knowledge gap. A new mathematical approach is introduced to evaluate the effect of the fracture-fluid-leakoff phenomenon on the fracture characteristics during hydraulic fracturing. The unified-fracture-design (UFD) concept is used in this research work to optimize the productivity of MFHWs where the direct boundary-element method (DBEM) is applied. The distributed-volumetric-sources (DVS) method, which offers a semianalytical response of a reservoir to closed outer boundaries with respect to a source, is also extended, and the results obtained from these two different techniques are compared. Then, the proposed methodology is applied to a synthetic case study to evaluate the influence of fracture-fluid leakoff on the productivity index (PI) and to obtain the fracture dimensions that result in the optimal productivity. It is concluded that leakoff leads to influx-pattern variation. Also, it is found that the optimal fracture for the leakoff case is shorter and wider at a constant proppant number, in contrast to the case without a leakoff event. This study proposes an accurate and reliable approach for productivity determination of MFHWs that can assist the petroleum industry to optimize hydraulic-fracturing operations.