Narrow Versus Wide Fairway Fracture Geometry

A large number of previous research has been done on characterization, hydraulic fracturing treatments, and well completion design. However, few studies have been conducted on the simulation of hydraulic fracture propagation, especially when the formation is heterogeneous and with large number of natural fractures. The existence of natural fractures at different scales may affect the propagation of the induced fracture. The crossing, arresting and opening are the interaction modes that are observed. The use of the discrete fracture network (DFN) models have been widespread in recent years in unconventional reservoir applications. In this paper, the microseismic monitoring is used to represent the stimulated reservior vloume (SRV), to indicate the relation between stress anisotropy and microseismic cloud shape. Xsite, a new, lattice-based software was used in an initial attempt towards understanding how the rock mass and the pre-existing natural fractures response to fluid injection is affected by some of the DFN characteries and operational parameters. Results indicated that for a given injected volume, a low stress anisotropy results in wide fracture fairway geometry whereas narrow fairway is observed as stress anisotropy is increased. Also, it was observed that the oirentation of the natural fracture network with respect to the principal stresses play an important role in fracture propagation.