Field Application of Hydraulic Impedance Testing for Fracture Measurement

Abstract

Summary Hydraulic impedance testing (HIT) is a technique for detecting and measuring formation fractures intersecting wellbores. A pressure pulse is introduced into a well, and the resulting pressure trace is interpreted to give fracture dimensions. The first part of this paper describes how HIT can be used to estimate fracture dimensions and presents some results from a laboratory experiment that show that dimensions can be measured accurately with HIT. The remainder of the paper describes field examples of the application of HIT. A demonstration of how HIT traces change as pressure is reduced, which provides a method for determining fracture closure pressure, is included.