Jurnal 4 (Hydraulic Fracturing)
Jurnal 4 (Hydraulic Fracturing)
Jurnal 4 (Hydraulic Fracturing)
This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference held in The Woodlands, Texas, USA, 4–6 February 2014.
This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
officers, or members.
Abstract
We investigate fracture propagation induced by hydraulic fracturing with water-injection, using numerical simulation. For full
3D rigorous modeling, we employ a numerical method that can model failure due to tensile and shear stresses, dynamic
nonlinear permeability, the dual continuum approach, leak-off in all directions, and thermo-poro-mechanical effects. From the
numerical results, fracture propagation is not the same as propagation of the water front, because fracturing is governed by
geomechanics, whereas water saturation is determined by fluid flow. At early times, the water saturation front is almost
identical to the fracture tip, showing that the fracture is mostly filled with injected water. However, at late times, advance of
the water front is retarded, compared to the fracture propagation, yielding a significant gap between the water front and the
fracture top, which is filled with reservoir gas. We also find considerable leak-off of water to the reservoir. The inconsistency
between the fracture volume and the volume of injected water cannot properly estimate the fracture length, when it is
estimated based on the simple assumption that the fracture is fully saturated with injected water. As an example of flow-
geomechanical responses, we identify pressure fluctuation under constant water injection, because hydraulic fracturing is itself
a set of many failure processes, in which pressure drops every time when failure occurs. The fluctuation decreases as the
fracture length grows.
We also study application of electromagnetic (EM) geophysical methods, because the EM geophysical methods are highly
sensitive to changes in porosity and pore-fluid properties, such as water injection into gas reservoirs. We employ a 3D finite-
element EM geophysical simulator and evaluate the sensitivity of the crosswell EM method for monitoring fluid movements in
shaly reservoirs. For the sensitivity evaluation, reservoir models are generated through the coupled flow-geomechanical
simulator and are transformed via a rock physics model into electrical conductivity models. It is shown that anomalous
conductivity distribution in the resulting models is closely related with injected water saturation but little with newly-created
unsaturated fractures. The numerical modeling experiments demonstrate that the crosswell EM method can be highly sensitive
to conductivity changes that directly indicate the migration pathways of the injected fluid. Accordingly, the EM method can
serve as an effective monitoring tool for distribution of injected water (i.e. migration pathways) during hydraulic fracturing
operations.
Introduction
Hydraulic fracturing with multiple horizontal wells has widely been used in stimulating abundant shale gas reservoirs in order
to increase reservoir permeability and productivity (Zoback 2007; Fjear et. al. 2008; Fisher and Warpinski 2012; Zoback et. al.
2010; Cipolla et. al. 2010). Creation of fractures increases permeability of geological formations by several orders, which can
meet economical feasibility of gas production of very low permeable reservoirs such as tight gas and shale gas reservoirs.
After the success of development in the Barnett shale, other shale gas plays such as the Marcellus, Eagle Ford, Haynesville,
New Albany, Antrim, and Fayetteville shales in the United States have been considered as potential resources near in the
future. Massive hydraulic fracturing with multiple stage stimulation can significantly enhance reservoir permeability followed
by productivity, increasing stimulated rock volume (SRV) (Kargbo et. al. 2010; Arthur et al. 2008). On the other hand, the
issues on the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing have been raised by environmental scientists, such as unstable
growth of the fractures, groundwater contamination, and induced seismicity from fault activation. For example, Osborn et al.
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(2011) claimed from the isotope analysis that methane dissolved in groundwater originated from shale gas reservoirs.
Geomechanical failure along the well casing due to incomplete cementing might also be problematic, yielding a potential
pathway of methane from the reservoirs to the drinking water aquifers (Zoback et al. 2010). Reservoir engineers however
argue that the environmental impact is still limited. For example, according to Fisher and Warpinski (2012), the fracture
lengths based on measured microseismic data are finite and the fracture tips are far below the drinking water zones. Rutqvist
et al. (2013) investigated induced seismicity by numerical simulation, showing that magnitudes of the induced seismicity by
fault activation are far below the level discernible by human.
Much research in simulating fracture propagation has been performed on hydraulic fracturing for several decades in order to
estimate SRV and the lengths of the created fractures, mainly based on 2D or pseudo 3D (Perkins and Kern, 1961; Nordren,
1972; Adachi et.al., 2007) . Even though those models can provide numerical efficiency and reduce computational cost, full
Let us consider the time when fracturing occurs, while there is little pressure diffusion. At this time scale, after the
fracturing, pore pressure is still below pore-pressure that can open the created fracture. We can then assume that reservoir gas
fills fractured space immediately once fracturing occurs, based on high mobility of gas (i.e., low viscosity and high relative
permeability), shown in the right of Fig. 1. When a fracture is closed, water cannot move to the new created fracture. After the
fracture becomes open, reservoir gas and the injected water come into the new fracture space by viscous force as well as
buoyancy. Furthermore, the increase of the fracture volume can decrease pore-pressure because of poro-mechanical effect,
which might allow the reservoir gas to leak into the fracture, if the pore-pressure is below gas pressure of the reservoir.
Consider the case that reservoir pressure and temperature are 17.1MPa and 58.8 oC, respectively, which come from a
generalized model of Marcellus shale. Viscosities of liquid water and gas phases are 4.79 104 Pa s and 1.78 105 Pa s ,
respectively. Density of gas at the reservoir condition, 1.15 102 kg m3 , cannot also be neglected, compared with density of
water, 9.89 102 kg m3 . From the densities and viscosities of water and gas, we can estimate the pattern of water saturation
movement of buoyancy, constructing the following equation of the fractional flow curve, f w , after ignoring the gradient of
capillary pressure within a fracture.
nk
1 N g kr , g S J Sr , J
fw , kr , J max 0, min
1.0 S ,
,1 (1)
kr , g kr , w
1 r , w
g w
where N g , kr , J , and J are the gravity number, relative permeability and viscosity of phase J. The subscript g and w indicate
gas and water phases, respectively. S J and Sr , J are saturation and residual (irreducible) saturation of phase J. We use the
modified versions of Stone’s relative permeability model.
Fig. 2 shows the fractional flow curves with various gravity numbers. From Fig. 2, the movement of water saturation is
estimated to be piston-like displacement, generating a shock wave. On the other hand, an aperture distribution along the
fracture from geomechanics is continuous. Reservoir gas would then be accumulated on the upper area of the fracture, which
yields a dry zone. We can anticipate that the gas volume within the fracture become larger as the simulated zone becomes
large, because reservoir gas that fills the simulated zone moves upward due to buoyancy. There is an additional issue how
much water infiltrates into the reservoir rock matrix, because leak-off of water into rock matrix can significantly affect
mobility of gas, reducing relative permeability, when gas is produced. Thus, rigorous modeling that can simulate coupled flow
and geomechanics is required to predict physical processes during hydraulic fracturing operations accurately.
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'c 2 t 't2 t '2s t 'n2 Tc , (2)
where 'c is the effective stress for tensile failure, which consists of shear and normal effective stresses. t 'n , t 't and t 's are
normal and shear effective stresses acting on a fracture plane (Fig. 3), and Tc is tensile strength. Using of Eq. 2, we account
for contribution of shear effective stress to tensile failure.
When implementing the tensile failure, we implicitly employ a node splitting scheme, as shown in the left of Fig. 3. Then,
considering vertical fracture propagation, we can simplify the node splitting scheme into a method that updates outer boundary
condition (i.e., from the Dirichlet condition to the Neumann condition, as shown in the right of Fig.3), not introducing an
internal boundary. This scheme was previously used in Ji et al. (2009). We then can reduce computational resources and code
management effort.
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Fig. 3 Schematics of tensile failure in 3D. Left: planar fracture propagation along the vertical direction. Right: modeling of vertical
fracture propagation using no horizontal displacement condition at the plane that contains the vertical fracture (Kim and Moridis
,2013).
For the modeling of the fracture permeability corresponding to tensile failure, we use the modified Cubic law (e.g., Snow,
1965; Rutqvist and Stephansson, 2003), written as
f
np
Qw ac H p wg , (3)
12w
where f is the aperture, also called fracture opening. Qw is flow rate of water. H is the fracture plate width, and g is the
l2 l l bl ll
l pl 3T ,l l Tl v , bl , (4)
Kl Ks l Kl
where is the Lagrange porosity, defined as the ratio of the pore volume in the deformed configuration to the bulk volume in
the reference (initial) configuration. The subscription l indicates subelements in a gridblock. T is temperature. K l , K s , l ,
T ,l , l are the drained bulk modulus, intrinsic solid grain modulus, the volume fraction, the thermal dilation coefficient, and
Biot’s coefficient for subelement l within a gridblock, respectively. v is total mean (volumetric) stress at the gridblock.
In numerical modeling, we employ the finite volume method for flow, in which flow variables take piecewise-constant
interpolation. For geomechanics, we use the finite element method, taking linear interpolation of displacement. In time
discretization, we employ the backward Euler method. These discretizations for flow and geomechanics are widely used in
reservoir simulation and computational geomechanics communities, respectively.
We take a sequential method to solve coupled flow and geomechanics problems. Specifically, we use the fixed-stress
sequential method in solving two-way coupling in pore-volume, written as
2 ln n 1
ln 1 ln l l
pl pl 3T ,l l Tl Tl
n n 1 n bl n
l
v vn 1 , (5)
Kl Ks
n
c
ln c p
l T ln
where the superscript n is the time level in time discretization. c p and cT correspond to the pore-compressibility and thermal
expansivity used in reservoir simulation, respectively. ln is called porosity correction, calculated from the previous
geomechanics solutions, in order to capture poromechanical effects.
Permeability is calculated based on explicit treatment, depending on failure status and aperture of the fracture at the previous
time step. Permeability is a strong function of geomechanical failure, and thus we take a small time strep size that ensures no
fracturing between two fracturing events for further accuracy.
From the given numerical schemes, we can make use of existing flow and geomechanics codes, by constructing an interface
between them. In this study, we couple TOUGH+RealGasH2O, a flow simulator, to ROCMECH, a geomechanics simulator,
shortly called T+M. T+M takes the several verification tests for thermo-poro-mechanics (e.g., the Terzaghi, Mandel, and
McNamee-Gibson problems), the opening of static fractures, and fracture propagations for viscosity and toughness dominated
systems, matching the analytical solutions (e.g., Kim and Moridis (2013)).
Simulation domain
We take a 3D simulation domain, as shown in Fig.4. We discretize the domain for geomechanics with 50, 5, 50 gridblocks in
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x, y and z directions, respectively. The direction of the minimum compressive principal total stress is perpendicular to the x-z
plane. The sizes of the gridblocks in the x and z direction are uniform, i.e., x z 3m . The sizes of the gridblocks in the y
direction are non-uniform, i.e., 0.1m, 0.5m, 3.0m, 10.0m, and 20.0m. We take 12GPa of Young's modulus, E , and 0.3 of
Poisson's ratio, v , respectively. The tensile strength of shale for the reference case is Tc 10MPa . We take 1.0 for
contribution of effective shear stress to tensile failure.
For flow, we share the same discretized domain of geomechanics except an additional layer in the y direction, having 50, 6,
50 gridblocks in x, y and z directions. The additional layer, the thickness of which is 1.0m, represents half of the width of the
stimulated reservoir zone shown in Fig. 1. We assume water to be injected at (x=75m , z=-1440m), which is an initial fractured
node. We take 8.645 10 18 m 2 of intrinsic permeability for the rock matrix, where 1 Darcy is 9.87 10 13 m 2 . For relative
permeability, we use Sr ,w 0.08 and Sr , g 0.01 . n p 3.0 and ac 0.14 are taken for the modified cubic law. Biot's
1 p
1
S S p
Pc c 1
1 Sr , g Sr ,w
w r ,w
, (6)
where Pc , p , and c are capillary pressure, the exponent that characterizes the capillary pressure curve, and the capillary
modulus, respectively. We take p 0.45 and c 20kPa in Eq. 6. Sr ,w 0.05 and Sr , g 0.0 are taken for capillarity, which
are slightly smaller than those used in the relative permeability model, in order to prevent unphysical behavior (Moridis et al.,
2008).
Fig. 4. A domain of hydraulic fracturing simulation in 3D. We assume a simultaneous fracturing operation, where the horizontal wells
are aligned with the direction of the minimum compressive principal total stress, S h .
Numerical results
Fig. 5 shows fracture propagation and fracture opening at the main fracture at different times. Due to the point source of
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water injection, the fracture propagates in an elliptic shape, as shown in the left figure. From the righ figure, the aperture of the
fracture is continuous when the fracture is open. The fracture propagation is stable, which means that it depends on the
injection time, and that it can be controlled by the injection rate and time.
Fig. 6 shows flow and geomechanical responses at different monitoring points. Fracturing occurs more at early times than at
late times. Due to discontinuity of fracturing events in time, we identify pressure fluctuation under the constant rate of water
injection, observing that pressure drops every time when failure occurs. Fluctuation of pressure is much severer at early times
than at late times, because the fracture volume is small at early times. Pressure responses of incompressible fluid are more
sensitive to smaller fractured areas. Then the fluctuation decreases as the fracture length grows, because the fractured area
becomes large. This pressure oscillation can also be found in Tzchichholz and Herrmann (1995). Along with the pressure
fluctuation, the aperture of the fracture has the same behavior as pressure does. For displacement, we observe the uplift at the
top of the simulation domain, because of expansion of the domain induced by fluid injection.
Fig. 6 Evolution of geomechanics and flow variables: (a) number of fractured nodes, (b) pressure at the injection point (b), (c)
aperture of the fracture at the injection point, (d) displacement at (x=75m, z=-1350m). Fracturing events are discontinuous, which
results in fluctuation in pressure and the aperture. The oscillation is more dominant at early times due to small volume of the
stimulated zone.
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In Fig. 7, we find existence of reservoir gas within the fracture. In particular, we identify a large amount of gas within the
fracture at late times. As the fracture grows, reservoir gas initially captured in the stimulated zone moves upward due to
buoyancy, taking the upper part of the fracture, while the injected water fills the lower part of the fracture because of higher
density. In Fig. 8, we also find that, at early times, the water saturation front is almost identical to the fracture tip, showing that
the fracture is mostly filled with injected water. However, at late times, advance of the water front is retarded, compared to the
fracture propagation, yielding a significant gap between the water front and the fracture top, which is filled with reservoir gas.
The fracture propagation is not the same as propagation of the water front, because fracturing is governed by geomechanics,
whereas water saturation is determined by fluid flow, just as anticipated in the previous section. We thus cannot assume the
fracture to be fully saturated with injected water when estimating dimension of the fracture.
p pL
Fig. 8 Distributions of water saturation, aperture, dimensionless pressure (pd) at x=75m. pd , where pU=40MPa and
pU pL
PL=17.1MPa. The aperture is continuous along the fracture, while gas saturation is somewhat discontinuous. At early times, water fills
almost all part of the fracture, whereas gas takes considerable volume of the fracture at late times.
In Fig. 9, we find considerable leak-off of water to the reservoir. Gas saturations at the damaged zone and intact reservoir
nearest to the stimulated zone are significantly low, indicating that considerable amount of water infiltrates into the reservoir.
When the leak-off water cannot be removed, it might potentially reduce productivity of gas production.
b(r) 0 , (10)
where e(r) is the electric field at position r, J s (r ) is an electric current source at angular frequency , o is the magnetic
permeability, σ(r ) is the electrical conductivity at position r, o is the dielectric permittivity, and v is the electric charge
density. In the paper, o within the earth and air is assumed to be constant and is set to that of free space (4π 10-7 H/m).
o is generally a tensor quantity but assumed to be a constant scalar quantity (8.85×10 −12 F/m) . σ(r ) is also assumed to be a
scalar quantity. iˆ indicates the imaginary unit.
By combining Eq. 7 with Eq. 8, we have the electric-field full-wave equation,
1
e(r ) o 2e(r ) iˆσe(r ) iˆJ s (r ) 0 . (11)
o
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Eq. 11 is modified to the electric-field diffusion equation by neglecting its second term. By doing this, we have:
1
e(r ) iˆσe(r ) iˆJ s (r ) 0 . (12)
o
We consider the finite-element (FE) formulation for solving the electric-field diffusion equation. The FE formulation of Eq.
12 starts with its equivalent weak statement (Um et al., 2013). The development of the weak statement requires the
multiplication of Eq. 6 by the edge basis function (Nédélec, 1980) and the integration over the model domain of V, resulting in
1
n (r) ( e e (r ) iˆσ ee e (r ) iˆJ s (r ))dV 0 ,
e
i (13)
6 6
e k (r ) e kj (r ) u kj nkj (r ) , (14)
j 1 j 1
k
where u j is the unknown amplitude of the electric field on edge j of the kth element.
Substituting Eq. 14 into Eq. 13 and using vector calculus identities with the homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions
yield
ue [u1e u e
2 ... u6e ] . (19)
Eq. 15 is considered local, because it results from integration over each individual element. Based on connectivity information
about elements in V , the local systems of FE equations derived from the individual elements are assembled into a single global
system of equations. Then, the superscript e is dropped. The solution of the global version of Eq. 15 determines the electric
fields in V. The magnetic fields are interpolated from the electric fields using the Faraday’s law. The system matrix of Eq. 15
is unstructured, sparse, complex and symmetric. Eq. 15 can be solved using an LU decomposition (Golub and Van Loan,
1996) or quasi-minimal residual method (Freund, 1992).
Qv g (1 ) 1CEC. (22)
In this study, the rock physics parameters of Eqs. 20, 21 and 22 are empirically chosen; both the cementation (m) factor and
the saturation (n) factor are set to 2; the grain density (ρg) is set to 2,370 (kg/m3); the cation exchange capacity (CEC) is set to
38,000 (Coulomb/kg); the electrical conductivity of the pore fluid is set to 3.33 (S/m). Thus, Eq. 20 transforms the reservoir
parameters to an electrical conductivity value.
SPE 168578 11
Hydraulic fracturing operations force fluids into the formation under high pressure, producing highly-localized changes in
porosity and pore fluids. Because EM geophysical methods are sensitive to porosity, fluid saturation and chemistry of the fluid
in the pore space, they are a promising tool for illuminating migration pathways of the injected fluids and can complement
microseismic methods.
column shows changes in conductivity values when the electrically-engineered high-conductivity fluid (10,000 S/m) is injected. The
4th column shows changes in conductivity values when the brine (3.33 S/m) is injected. At the top of the third column, the yellow
vertical line segments indicate observation wells for the vertical crosswell EM configuration. Two yellow indicates the positions of
horizontal wells for the horizontal crosswell EM configuration. The color charts for the 1st and 2nd column are linear and those for the
3rd and 4th column are based on the common log.
A primary goal of our EM modeling analysis is to examine capabilities of an EM geophysical method for sensing bulk
conductivity changes that are directly related to migration pathways of injected fluids. For successful EM detection for the
fluid movement, it is important to ensure a sufficient contrast in electrical conductivity between intact and the stimulated
12 SPE 168578
zones. The sufficient contrast can be realized by injecting the brine (3.3 S/m). One can also consider electrically-engineered
injection fluids that have high conductivity values (e.g. 10,000 S/m). The fabrication of a mixture of such fluids and proppant
is currently feasible. For detailed information about properties of electrically-engineered fluids and proppant, a reader is
referred to Natália Saliés (2012) and references therein. Magnetically-engineered fluids are also feasible. One can find more
information about them from Borglin et al. (2000) and Oldenburg et al. (2000).
Based on Waxman-Smits equation, we transform reservoir parameters to realistic electrical conductivity models. Fig. 10
shows cross-sectional views of reservoir parameters (the first column for reservoir porosity and the second column for water
saturation) and electrical conductivity models (the third column) after hydraulic fracturing starts along with a high-
conductivity fluid (10,000 S/m). In Fig. 10, the porosity and the saturation are volume-averaged on the stimulated zone. For a
comparison purpose, we also generate the electrical conductivity models (the fourth column) when the brine (3.33S/m) is
Crosswell EM methods
To monitor migration pathways of the injected fluids, we consider crosswell EM methods. The crosswell EM methods (Fig.
11) interrogate electrical conductivity structures between wells and can yield detailed 2D/3D images. The EM methods
typically employ solenoids as a transmitter (a wire coil carrying alternating currents). The emitted magnetic source fields are
called primary magnetic fields (Bo) and induce currents in nearby formations. In turn, the induced currents generate secondary
magnetic fields. The primary and secondary magnetic fields are measured in the other well with magnetic receivers. After a
number of sources are excited at different positions in one well and the magnetic fields are measured at a number of receiver
positions in the other well, the conductivity structures between the wells are imaged through inverse modeling. For details of
the crosswell EM methods and their applications, a reader is referred to Alumbaugh and Morrison (1995), Wilt et al. (1995),
Zeng et al. (2000), and Gao et al. (2008). To successfully sense and monitor migration pathways of the injected fluids,
conductivity changes due to their migration should produce measurable perturbation in the magnetic fields. In this modeling
study, we focus on the sensitivity analysis of the crosswell EM methods for the conductivity changes.
Fig. 11 A typical crosswell EM survey configuration (Schlumberger, 2006). Sources and receivers are lowered into the wells. The
primary magnetic fields of the transmitter coil induce the electrical current (yellow). The current produces the secondary magnetic
fields (pink). The receivers record the both primary and magnetic fields.
We consider vertical and horizontal crosswell EM configurations. The proposed configurations are shown in Fig. 10a. The
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vertical crosswell EM configuration intends to better sense the height and the width of fractures between wells. The horizontal
crosswell EM configuration would be better sensitive to the thickness of the fractures. For both crosswell EM configurations,
well spacing is set to 100 m. A source frequency is set to 3,000 Hz. To allow the high frequency source in a well environment,
it is assumed that a part of casing where the sources and the receivers are installed is cased with non-metallic materials (e.g.
fiberglass). It is also assumed that magnetic receivers can detect 1% difference in the magnetic field amplitude and the receiver
noise level is 1.0-10 (Amp/m).
The proposed crosswell EM configurations have been simulated using a 3D FE electromagnetic simulator (Um et al., 2013)
over the electrical conductivity models shown in Fig. 10. Vertical crosswell EM responses to the conductivity models with the
high-conductivity fluid and the brine are shown at selected source positions in Figs. 12 and 13, respectively. Horizontal
crosswell EM responses to the conductivity models with the high-conductivity fluid and the brine are shown in Figs. 14 and
Fig. 12 Magnetic field amplitudes (the left column) and their relative difference (the right column) with respect to the background magnetic
field when the vertical crosswell configuration is applied to the conductivity model shown in the third column of Fig. 10. Receivers are placed
along the axis that is parallel to the z-axis and passes through the point (x=130 m and y=0 m).
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Fig. 13 Magnetic field amplitudes (the left column) and their relative difference (the right column) with respect to the background
magnetic field when the vertical crosswell configuration is applied to the conductivity model shown in the fourth column of Fig. 10.
Receivers are placed along the axis that is parallel to the z-axis and passes through the point (x=130 m and y=0 m).
Fig. 14 Magnetic field amplitudes (the left column) and their relative difference (the right column) with respect to the background
magnetic field when the horizontal crosswell configuration is applied to the conductivity model shown in the third column of Fig. 10.
Receivers are placed along the axis that is parallel to the y-axis and passes through the point (x=130 m and z=-1440 m).
Fig. 15 Magnetic field amplitudes (the left column) and their relative difference (the right column) with respect to the background
magnetic field when the horizontal crosswell configuration is applied to the conductivity model shown in the fourth column of Fig. 10.
Receivers are placed along the axis that is parallel to the y-axis and passes through the point (x=130 m and z=-1440 m).
Conclusions
We investigated geomechanical and flow responses during hydraulic fracturing operations induced by water-injection. From
the numerical results, we identified that fracture propagation is not the same as propagation of the water front. The gap
between the water front and the fracture top is more dominant at later times when a large amount of water is injected, and the
gap is filled with reservoir gas. We also found considerable leak-off of water to the reservoir. The inconsistency between the
fracture volume and the volume of injected water might underestimate the fracture propagation, when we take the simple
assumption that the fracture is fully saturated with injected water. We identified fluctuation in pressure and displacement under
16 SPE 168578
constant water injection. As the fracture dimension becomes larger, the fluctuation decreases. All the complex physical
processes above are fundamentally based on tight coupling between flow and geomechanics, which have different time scales
between them. Thus, rigorous modeling of coupled flow and geomechanics is strongly recommended to capture accurate
reservoir behavior.
Owing to rigorous 3D modeling capabilities of the recently-developed coupled flow-geomechanical simulator, T+M, we
have been able to generate a series of realistic electrical conductivity models that reveals transient changes of conductivity in
shaly reservoirs during hydraulic fracturing operations. Because the injected fluid movement is separated from the fracture
propagation in late times, the conductivity models are more closely related with the migration pathways of the injected fluids
rather than unsaturated fractures. The 3D FE Maxwell’s equations solver was used in this study to simulate crosswell EM
methods over a series of the conductivity models. The modeling analysis suggests the crosswell EM method can serve as an
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by the US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water, under an Interagency Agreement with
the U.S. Department of Energy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory through Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231,
and by RPSEA (Contract No. 08122-45) through the Ultra-Deepwater and Unconventional Natural Gas and Other Petroleum
Resources Research and Development Program as authorized by the US Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 2005. The research
described in this article has been funded wholly (or in part) by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through Interagency
Agreement (DW-89-92235901-C) to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The views expressed in this article are those
of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the EPA.
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