[Opm] Hydraulic Fracture Modelling

Wed Jan 8 05:48:57 UTC 2020

Many thanks Alf for clarifying about the capability of Resinsight of supporting hydraulic fractures. Thank you Neale for your comments.

I looked for the keyword PROPPANT or something similar in Flow’s manual, and couldn’t find any. So, I assumed that the hydraulic fracture options were not implemented yet in Flow.

Some years ago, the only possibility to model hydraulic fractures in Eclipse was by defining regions to identify the hydraulic fractures, and improving the transmissibility in those regions when the hydraulic fractures were implemented.

After 2015, many new keywords have been implemented in the simulators to be able to model the hydraulic fractures along with the natural fractures in more detail. The graphical interfaces have evolved accordingly.

To give a better idea of the reason for my question, I would like to share with the group the hydraulic fracture implementation in tNavigator (Rock Flow Dynamics, RFD) and IMEX (Computer Modelling Group, CMG), since these two companies have published videos in YouTube:

1.      How to Add Hydraulic Fractures Using tNavigator, November 18, 2015 – 5:56 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOg0wNssPeA

For people not familiar with tNavigator, it uses the same keywords than Eclipse, but the graphical interface is different.

tNavigator allows to input explicitly in the data deck the following fracture properties:

  *   Azimuth angle
  *   Fracture connections
  *   Fracture half length
  *   Proppant properties (permeability vs. pressure)
  *   Proppant washing out function

RFD recommends the following SPE papers:

  *   Ouenes, A., Bachir, A., Paryani, M., & Smaoui, R. (2015, October 20). Estimation of Propped Volume Permeability Using Strain from Geomechanical Modeling of Interacting Hydraulic and Natural Fractures - Application to the Eagle Ford. Society of Petroleum Engineers. doi:10.2118/175971-MS
  *   Bogachev, K. Y., & Shelkov, V. (2010, January 1). A New Approach in Modeling Hydraulic Fractures and Auto Fractures at Injectors in Full-field Models (Russian). Society of Petroleum Engineers. doi:10.2118/138071-RU

2.      Latest Advancements in Modelling and Optimizing Hydraulic Fractures, CMG Webinar, January 25, 2017 – 1:11 hr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAnpXY04d7I

Incorporation of hydraulic fracture properties in the data deck: minutes 21-25

Interactive demonstration on how to create hydraulic fractures: minutes 27-39

CMG allows to input the following fracture properties:

  *   Fracture name
  *   Fracture width
  *   Fracture permeability
  *   Fracture tip permeability
  *   Fracture relative permeability

Fracture permeability and fracture tip permeability are used to model different conductivities along the fracture.

Fractures are defined geometrically with a local grid refinement within the coarse grid.

Hope that the videos and the brief description of other data that can be input in the simulator to model the fractures promote further discussion and implementation, if appropriate. I am just starting to use Flow, so I might be missing some of its capabilities.

Is there any Flow example data deck with the implementation of hydraulic fractures that anyone can share?

Many thanks in advance. Regards.

PC

________________________________
From: Neale ROBERTS <ncroberts4 at msn.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 13:34
To: Alf Birger Rustad <abir at equinor.com>; Patricia Carreras <patricia_carreras at hotmail.com>; opm at opm-project.org <opm at opm-project.org>
Subject: Re: Hydraulic Fracture Modelling

Patricia - I don't believe any special calculations should be required to model hydraulic fractures. I would recommend, depending on grid size vs stimulation, using a negative skin in COMPDAT, or perm multipliers in the grid.

Good luck! - NR

________________________________
From: Opm <opm-bounces at opm-project.org> on behalf of Alf Birger Rustad <abir at equinor.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 12:27 AM
To: Patricia Carreras <patricia_carreras at hotmail.com>; opm at opm-project.org <opm at opm-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Opm] Hydraulic Fracture Modelling

Hi Patricia,

I am a bit unsure how you envision the fractured well modelled in Flow. Resinsight already has support for it using well completions:
https://resinsight.org/wells-and-completions/<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fresinsight.org%2Fwells-and-completions%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C31118a8d71194249098a08d793a88eb6%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637140224460986723&sdata=vHKRWI0jXpVkEXbZXB7VFyfBQlt0alX5lJSh2Vpc%2B5A%3D&reserved=0>

There is to my knowledge no funding available to work on this in Flow at the moment, so the usual "patches are welcome" applies 🙂 Please also note that you will find software in the OPM IFEM repositories to model the fracture propagation in the reservoir.

Best,
Alf

________________________________
Fra: Opm <opm-bounces at opm-project.org> på vegne av Patricia Carreras <patricia_carreras at hotmail.com>
Sendt: mandag 6. januar 2020 23:01
Til: opm at opm-project.org <opm at opm-project.org>
Emne: [Opm] Hydraulic Fracture Modelling

Hello all,

I wonder if there are any plans to include the modelling of hydraulic fractures in Flow. This is a key issue given the current important production from unconventionals in the US and other places of the world. Obviously, ResInsight will need to be updated accordingly.

Thank you for the hard work. Best regards.

PC

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