3D Modeling of Multistage Hydraulic Fractures and Two-Way-Coupling Geomechanics/Fluid-Flow Simulation of a Horizontal Well in the Nikanassin Tight Gas Formation, Western Canada Sedimentary Basin
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary Unconventional gas is stored in extensive areas known as basin-centered continuous-gas accumulations. Although the estimated worldwide figures differ significantly, the consensus among the studies relating to unconventional gas resources is that the volumes are gigantic. However, the low permeability in these types of reservoirs usually results in a very low recovery factor. To help unlock these resources, this paper presents a new and more accurate way of simulating multistage hydraulic fracturing in horizontal wells in three dimensions by use of single- and dual-porosity reservoir models. In this approach, the geometry (not necessarily symmetric) and orientation of the multiple hydraulic fractures are driven by the prevailing stress state in the drainage volume of the horizontal well. Once the hydraulic-fracturing job is accurately modeled in three dimensions, two-way geomechanical coupling is used to history match the produced gas from a horizontal well drilled in the Nikanassin naturally fractured tight gas formation of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB). Traditionally, the most widely used approaches have their roots in semianalytical calculations simplifying the fracturing system to a planar feature propagating symmetrically away from a line source of injection. In contrast, the computed results presented in this study show that the incorporation of geomechanical effects gives a more realistic representation of the orientation and geometry of hydraulic fractures. Reduction in permeability of the natural and hydraulic fractures because of pressure depletion results in more-realistic production predictions compared with the case in which geomechanical effects are ignored. The telling conclusion, in light of the computed results, is that the field of hydraulic fracturing provides an object lesson in the need for coupled 3D geomechanical approaches. The method presented in this paper will help to improve gas rates and recoveries from reservoirs with permeability values in the nanodarcy scale.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".