An Effective Approach to Modeling Hydraulic Fracture in a Coarse Scale Simulation Model

Abstract

The use of hydraulic fracturing to improve well productivity in tight reservoirs and connecting unconsolidated quality reservoirs via hydraulic fracturing is very well practiced in the oil industry. Currently to model hydraulic fracture in order to fully assess its effect in the well and its interaction with the formation (or different layers) requires upscaling methods to reach higher resolution (refinement) in order to reach certain accuracy in simulations like sector-based or local grid refinement techniques around well-reservoir modeling. However, modeling hydraulic fracturing in a large full-field reservoir simulation model with hundreds of wells and millions of cells is computationally very expensive. The aim of this proposal is to provide an alternative modeling of hydraulic fracturing at any size-based cell without the need of refinement saving computational cost. Even though computational capacity has increase exponentially in the last decade, the complexity and resolution of simulation models does overwhelm conventional computational processing leaving high resolutions models to corporations and companies with major resources in computing as the only capable to ensure an effective simulation of stimulation in wells modeling interaction with full field reservoir models. The search of alternatives to simplify and propose representative models of hydraulic fracture is part of needed applications to provide tools in field development and reservoir management scenarios, specially if a sizable data base with good quality surveying and compensated with production and performance data can represent key cornerstones to create meaningful characteristic variables in order to apply in modeling and forecast activities as history matching. This paper proposes a new approach to model the hydraulic fracturing (HF) effect based on a volumetric relation between created fracture and influenced volume in a designated reservoir/productive formation to be use specially in coarse simulation models to simulate the enhancement of the hydraulic fracture effects in production and history matching modeling. The use of field data and pressure matched properties based on stimulation parameters is the foundation to rely on. The new approach helped developing a fracture factor used to model permeability interaction between formation and stimulated volume designated by cell size and position. The proposed approach guaranties no change on regional nor alteration of static model properties maintaining the geological concept intact and providing a more realistic approach in order to simulate effectively stimulation in modeled wells in any type of grid or geometry of cells.