Interaction of Fracture Fluid With Formation Rock and Proppant on Fracture Fluid Clean-up and Long-term Gas Recovery in Marcellus Shale Reservoirs

Open Access
- Author:
- Yue, Wenting
- Graduate Program:
- Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- November 05, 2012
- Committee Members:
- Yilin Wang, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Turgay Ertekin, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Derek Elsworth, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- fracture damage
formation damage
clay swell
proppant scaling
proppant diagenesis. - Abstract:
- The exploitation of unconventional gas reservoirs has become an integral part of the North American gas supply. The economic viability of many unconventional gas developments hinges on the effective stimulation of extremely low permeability reservoir rocks. With improving drilling and stimulation techniques, many unconventional plays have become realistic contributors to the energy budget. The Marcellus shale reservoir contains large amount of natural gas resources and its proximity to high demand markets makes it an attractive target for energy development. Hydraulic fracturing is the stimulation method of choice in shale gas reservoirs. Even though hydraulic fracturing technique improves ultimate gas recovery, there are several factors that impact the production of natural gas from a hydraulically fractured shale gas well. This study was undertaken to quantify the impact of selected post hydraulic fracture factors that affects shale gas wells. With the use of commercial reservoir simulator that models cumulative production and flow rate from a vertical well located in a 160 acre Marcellus shale gas reservoir, we are able to quantify how much impact this various factors will have on the ultimate gas recovered from the reservoir under consideration. A base model contains multi-phase flow and proppant crushing was simulated and used as the base result for which other factors was incorporated and compared. The new knowledge from this research should enable engineers to better design fracture treatments and helps operators manage the well in the Marcellus shale formation. The observation and recommendations will also be useful for further studies in this area.