Semi-analytical solution for bottomhole pressure transient analysis of a hydraulically fractured horizontal well in a fracture-cavity reservoir

Abstract

This paper study the role of hydraulic fracture properties on the transient bottomhole pressure (BHP) behavior of a horizontal well producing from a tight fracture-cavity reservoir. A combination of point source function, Laplace transformation and Perturbation transformation are used to obtain BHP step by step. Through literature comparison and numerical simulation, the results of BHP have a good consistency, which indicates the proposed method is scientific and reasonable. We divide the fluid flow into five stages, namely the wellbore storage stage, the karst cave fluid flows to the fracture stage, the radial flow stage of karst cave and fracture system, the matrix fluid flows to the fracture stage and the quasi-steady state stage. We come to the conclusion that the number of fractures and fracture direction mainly affect radial flow stage. In contrast, the length of horizontal subsection and skin factor mainly affect the karst cave fluid flows to the fracture stage. The matrix fluid flows to the fracture stage is more obvious when the fracture half-length and the horizontal segment spacing of the horizontal well are small. The study believes special attention should be paid to reforming the formations at both ends of the horizontal well. The advantage of this method is to incorporate well geometry (skin factor) and hydraulic fracturing design (fracture parameters), which is useful for well test interpretation through generating a new set of type curves. What’s more, this new method has the characteristics of easy calculation. The findings of this study can help for better understanding of well test analysis in fracture-cavity reservoir. However, the limitation of this study is that it is only suitable for this situation the horizontal well does not encounter karst caves and the karst caves in the reservoir are connected to the wellbore through fractures.