Application of Inter-Fracture Injection and Production in a Cluster Well to Enhance Oil Recovery

Abstract

Applications of cluster wells and hydraulic fracturing enable commercial productivity from unconventional reservoirs. However, well productivity decrease rapidly for this type of reservoirs, and in many cases, it is difficult to maintain a productivity that is economical. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is therefore needed to improve well performance. Traditional fluid injection from other wells are not feasible due to the ultra-low permeability, and fluid Huff-n-Puff also fails to meet the expected recovery. This work investigates the feasibility of the inter-fracture injection and production (IFIP) approach to increase oil production of multiple multi-fractured horizontal wells (MFHW). Three MFHWs are considered in a cluster well. Each MFHW includes injection fractures (IFs) and recovery fractures (RFs). The fractures with even and odd indexes are assigned to be IFs or RFs, respectively. The injection/production schedule falls into two categories: synchronous inter-fracture injection and production (s-IFIP) and asynchronous inter-fracture injection and production (a-IFIP). To analyze the well performance of multiple MFHWs using the IFIP method, this work performs numerical simulation based on the compartmental embedded discrete fracture model (cEDFM) and compares the production performance of three MFHWs using four different producing methods (i.e., primary depletion, CO2 Huff-n-Puff, s-IFIP, and a-IFIP). Although the number of producing fractures is reduced by about 50% for s-IFIP and a-IFIP, they achieve much higher oil rates than primary depletion and CO2 Huff-n-Puff. Sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the impact of parameters on the IFIP. The fracture spacing between IFs and RFs, CO2 injection rates, and connectivity of fracture networks affect the oil production significantly, followed by length of RFs, well spacing among MFHWs and length of IFs. The suggested well completion scheme is presented for the a-IFIP and s-IFIP methods. This work demonstrates the ability of the IFIP method in enhancing oil production of multiple MFHWs in unconventional reservoirs.