Production Performance Simulation of the Fractured Horizontal Well Considering Reservoir and Wellbore Coupled Flow in Shale Gas Reservoirs

Abstract

Unmodified original shale gas reservoirs have been demonstrated to have extremely low permeability, and the long horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques are widely used to obtain economic gas production. However, these techniques can result in a nonlinear flow of fluids during transport through the multi-scale pore system and the complex fracture network around the horizontal well, as well as a two-phase gas-water flow during shale production. To solve these issues, in this paper, first, the complex fracture network around the horizontal well is characterized using the discrete main hydraulic fractures combined with composite regions with different properties. Then, the dual porosity media and discrete-fracture model are implemented to describe the nonlinear flow behavior in the multi-scale pore system, and a wellbore pressure drop model is established to characterize the transient two-phase gas–liquid flow in the different sections of the fractured horizontal well. Finally, the coupled reservoir wellbore flow model is fully implicitly solved using the control volume finite element method and unstructured tetrahedral grids. The results of the simulation model of a multi-stage fractured horizontal well in the shale of the Longmaxi Formation will help field engineers deeply understand gas and water production performance and the dynamics of wellbore and reservoir pressure, as well as optimize development schemes.