Abstract
A practical simulation model is developed and demonstrated with applications for accurate characterization of production rate and pressure behavior with time in shale-gas reservoirs featuring horizontal wells intersected with multi-stages of hydraulic fractures. The model determines the contribution of each fracture stage to the overall production and predicts the pressure changes occurring in the fracture and matrix zones by a compartmental simulation approach. Various flow regimes of drawdown test are investigated for fracture diagnosis with different fracture permeability values to determine the external boundary effect. Our practical mathematical modeling, coupling the wellbore and reservoir hydraulics, is solved numerically by an iterative method to determine the flow rates coming into the horizontal well from multiple hydraulic fractures like the commingled layers intersected by a vertical well. This approach provides a reasonable description of behavior of multiple stages in shale gas reservoirs by considering the alteration of the gas transport properties and the changing apparent permeability under the effect of pore proximity of shale. Various applications of our non-Darcy simulation model demonstrate the importance of the corrections relevant for shale-gas reservoirs compared with the conventional Darcy flow without consideration of such corrections. Commensurate with field observations, when the non-Darcy flow corrections are considered, the cumulative gas production is higher compared with the conventional Darcy flow calculations which impact significantly on fracture and matrix pressure responses and production forecasting.
