Title: Influence of Fracturing Fluid Rheology on the Productivity of Stimulated Oil and Gas Reservoirs
Author(s): Naval Goel and Subhash Shah
Journal: Oklahoma Geological Survey, Circular 107
Abstract: The objective of hydraulic fracturing treatment is to increase productivity of oil and gas reservoir by creating a proppant-packed fracture having higher conductivity than that of the reservoir. The permeability of the proppant pack in a fracture can be 10,000 times that of the reservoir. The proppant are placed in the fracture with a fluid which must have adequate rheology to keep them in suspension across the perforated interval of the reservoir. An understanding of fluid rheology is, therefore, important to optimize productivity of the simulated oil and gas reservoirs. This influence of fluid rheology has been studied in the present work.
The study was performed by stimulation treatments of two example reservoirs. The first treatment was evaluated with a two-dimensional fracture model, and the second with a three-dimensional model in a commercial fracturing simulator. In both stimulation treatments, fracturing fluid viscosity was varied while maintaining all other stimulation and reservoir parameters constant. The results of these simulations are discussed in the present work. The observations made on the theoretical models are then compared with the images obtained from a large-scale physical model of a fracture available at the University of Oklahoma. These comparisons provide useful implications for characterization of the fluids used in the fracturing treatments of oil and gas wells.
