Analysis of the Influencing Factors on the Well Performance in Shale Gas Reservoir

Abstract

Due to the ultralow permeability of shale gas reservoirs, stimulating the reservoir formation by using hydraulic fracturing technique and horizontal well is required to create the pathway of gas flow so that the shale gas can be recovered in an economically viable manner. The hydraulic fractured formations can be divided into two regions, stimulated reservoir volume (SRV) region and non-SRV region, and the produced shale gas may exist as free gas or adsorbed gas under the initial formation condition. Investigating the recovery factor of different types of shale gas in different region may assist us to make more reasonable development strategies. In this paper, we build a numerical simulation model, which has the ability to take the unique shale gas flow mechanisms into account, to quantitatively describe the gas production characteristics in each region based on the field data collected from a shale gas reservoir in Sichuan Basin in China. The contribution of the free gas and adsorbed gas to the total production is analyzed dynamically through the entire life of the shale gas production by adopting a component subdivision method. The effects of the key reservoir properties, such as shale matrix, secondary natural fracture network, and primary hydraulic fractures, on the recovery factor are also investigated.