Hydraulic Fracturing Design Optimization - Bakken Case Study
Contents
Hydraulic Fracturing Design Optimization - Bakken Case Study
The case study is prepared to illustrate the capabilities of the optiFracMS multistage fracturing optimization software.
The goal of the study is to optimize a fracturing design for a Bakken formation.
Two fracture design cases were considered:
- Operating company fracture design based on a Big Data application
- Optimized fracturing design based on the optiFracMS software
For the both cases a production forecast was calculated and cumulative oil production was compared.
Inputs
The following inputs are used in both fracture design cases.
Fracturing Design Parameters |
Fracture Production Forecast Parameters | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hydraulic Fracturing Design Cases
Parameters | Big Data | optiFracMS |
---|---|---|
Proppant number | 14.8 | 14.8 |
Dimensionless productivity index, JD | 18.1 | 46.7 |
Number of fractures, n | 200 | 28 |
Dimensionless fracture conductivity, CfD | 60 | 8 |
Fracture half length, xf, ft | 64 | 455 |
Fracture width, wf, in | 0.032 | 0.032 |
Fracture penetration, Ix | 0.1 | 0.7 |
Operating company design - Big Data
The Bakken Big Data study on the area compiled by the company petroleum engineers suggests an optimum completion design being 30 stages with 10 clusters per stage. Based on working experience, engineers estimate to get about 200 fractures as a result of the well stimulation.
Optimized fracturing design - optiFracMS
optiFracMS online petroleum engineering software at www.pengtools.com was run to optimize the fracture design.
The resulted design calculates the optimum number of fractures to be 28.
Note that optiFracMS was also used to calculate the design parameters (JD, CfD, xf, wf, Ix) of the Big Data design based on number of fractures of 200.
Hydraulic Fracturing Production Forecast
Both cases were simulated using the analytical model by Brown et al. [1] using the commercial software IHS Harmony.
1 year production forecasts were compared as a result:
Parameters | Big Data | optiFracMS |
---|---|---|
Cumulative oil production in 1 year, Mstb | 70 | 113 |
Bakken Case Study Discussion and Conclusions
References
- ↑ Brown, Margaret; Ozkan, Erdal; Raghavan, Rajagopal; Kazemi, Hossein (December 2011). "Practical Solutions for Pressure-Transient Responses of Fractured Horizontal Wells in Unconventional Shale Reservoirs". SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering. Society of Petroleum Engineers. 24 (06).