A workflow for flow simulation in shale oil reservoirs: A case study in woodford shale

Abstract

In recent years, with new technologies of long horizontal wells and staged hydraulic fracturing, the development of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs (i.e., shale gas and shale oil) has gained significant momentum. Due to extremely low permeability, these unconventional formations cannot be produced economically without significant stimulation. In the current research, the workflow for shale reservoir history matching that can be used for other shale resources producing from either condensate or oil reservoirs is developed. Production data and well geometry data for nineteen wells were available in Woodford shale. During this work, using the available data, single well simulation models for all the individual wells were constructed and then models were tuned to match the historical data. It has been shown that the fracture half length, shear fracture distribution and the interaction between matrix and fractures should be captured. Also, the results showed that fracture half-length can be longer than 2,000 ft, but the permeability of the fracture is dependent on how far the fracture is from the well. It was found that for multiple well history matching, fracture half-length and the interaction between the wells are the most important factors. Using multiple history matched models, it was shown that multiple models with different fracture distributions could capture the historical data, but they exhibit different future predictions.

Cited as: Sharifi, M., Kelkar, M., Karkevandi-Talkhooncheh, A. A workflow for flow simulation in shale oil reservoirs: A case study in woodford shale. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2021, 5(4): 365-375, doi: 10.46690/ager.2021.04.03

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