Evaluation of the Potentials for Adapting the Multistage Hydraulic Fracturing Technology in Tight Carbonate Reservoir

Abstract

Hydraulic fracturing is considered to be a vital cornerstone in decision making of unconventional reservoirs. With an increasing level of development of unconventional reservoirs, many questions have arisen regarding enhancing production performance of tight carbonate reservoirs, especially the evaluation of the potential for adapting multistage hydraulic fracturing technology in tight carbonate reservoirs to attain an economic revenue. In this paper we present a feasibility study of multistage fractured horizontal well in typical tight carbonate reservoirs covering different values of permeability. We show that NPV is the suitable objective function for deciding on the optimum number of fractures and fracture half-length. Multistage fractured horizontal well has been found to be a feasible technique to produce from tight carbonate reservoirs with permeability in the range of 0.01-0.05 mD, while it is not economic reservoirs with permeability of around 0.001 mD. In addition, our study suggests that for feasibility study purposes simplified homogeneous reservoir models can be used instead of a heterogeneous one without compromising the quality of conclusions. This will save time, money and efforts in evaluating production performance of various options like, number, length and other fracture properties of multistage fractured horizontal wells.