Shale Reservoirs Multi-Fracture Fracturing Technique and Studies on Reservoirs Stresses

Abstract

Theoretical studies have shown that the generation of the hydraulic fractures reduces or even reverses the stress anisotropy near the fractures and results in increasing the complexity of fractures. A finite element model was established in which the pore pressure elements were used to simulate the behavior of porous media and the pore pressure cohesive elements were adopted to catch the characters of hydraulic fractures. A special fracturing manner was adopted to create complicated fracture networks by reducing or even reversing the stress anisotropy between fractures. The geometries of hydraulic fractures, strains, stresses, pore pressure distributions and fluid pressures within the fractures are obtained. The results of the model are fit well with the corresponding theoretical data. The simulation results show that the stress anisotropy is reduced by the generation of the hydraulic fractures, multiple parallel transverse fractures of horizontal well even reverse the stress anisotropy in some place of the reservoir. The simulation results validate the feasibility of the theoretical studies and the expected complex network fractures could be created by adopting special fracturing manner.