Boundary Value Effects on Migration Patterns in Hydraulically Fractured Shale Formations

T. Aseeperi[1]
[1]Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA
Publié en 2014

During the hydraulic fracturing process, there can be possible re-activation of closed/sealed faults and natural fractures in the formation, which may lead to changes in the boundary conditions of the reservoir. While study models of shale gas formations have utilized the concept of a closed reservoir in order to optimize the production of gas in the well-bore, this assumption cannot be adopted in the presence of a newly activated fault along the boundary. Our model presents results of numerical simulations of this scenario. For computational tractability, the domain is sized around a production stage, and boundary conditions varied to capture the effects of the new reservoir feature. A semi-explicit representation of horizontal and hydraulic fractures is implemented in this study