Abstract
Since a large amount of nanopores exist in tight oil reservoirs, fluid transport in nanopores is complex due to large capillary pressure. Recent studies only focus on the effect of nanopore confinement on single-well performance with simple planar fractures in tight oil reservoirs. Its impacts on multi-well performance with complex fracture geometries have not been reported. In this study, a numerical model was developed to investigate the effect of confined phase behavior on cumulative oil and gas production of four horizontal wells with different fracture geometries. Its pore sizes were divided into five regions based on nanopore size distribution. Then, fluid properties were evaluated under different levels of capillary pressure using Peng-Robinson equation of state. Afterwards, an efficient approach of Embedded Discrete Fracture Model (EDFM) was applied to explicitly model hydraulic and natural fractures in the reservoirs. Finally, three fracture geometries, i.e. non-planar hydraulic fractures, non-planar hydraulic fractures with one set natural fractures, and non-planar hydraulic fractures with two sets natural fractures, are evaluated. The multi-well performance with confined phase behavior is analyzed with permeabilities of 0.01 md and 0.1 md. This work improves the analysis of capillarity effect on multi-well performance with complex fracture geometries in tight oil reservoirs.
Highlights
Tight reservoirs make significant contributions to the oil and gas productions in recent years
The gas production of the case with the capillary pressure effect is higher compared to the case without the capillary pressure effect
The Embedded Discrete Fracture Model (EDFM) approach is applied to describe the effect of fluid flow in the complex fracture geometries
Summary
Tight reservoirs make significant contributions to the oil and gas productions in recent years. Du and Chu[10] used a commercial reservoir simulator to investigate the influence of PVT variations on single-well performance in the Bakken formation They discussed the confined PVT properties in two permeability scenarios, the pore size distribution and fracture networks were not included in their work. The capillarity equilibrium in an in-house compositional reservoir simulator to forecast the well performance They compared oil recoveries of tight oil and gas condensate cases, but complex fractures geometries were not investigated. Siripatrachai et al.[17] developed a compositional reservoir simulator incorporating the capillary pressure effect on phase behavior with several discrete hydraulic fractures. The verified methodology was used to build a numerical reservoir model including four horizontal wells to simulate the capillary pressure effect on well performance with three complex fracture geometries. This work improves the analysis of multi-well performance with complex fracture geometries in tight oil reservoirs
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