Can HVFRs Increase the Oil Recovery in Hydraulic Fractures Applications?

Abstract

In unconventional reservoirs, such as Bakken Fm, the stimulation application is the required method to develop and produce economically from this vast reserve. However, the production process is still only through primary depletion mechanism with low recovery factor in ranging of 3-5% due to sharp decline in oil production by depletion in natural fracture networks as well as unsuccessful implementation hydraulic fracturing design. This paper aims to investigate the application of HVFRs with surfactant in high TDS condition to enhance Bakken oil wells production performance using an integral methodology between 3D/2D Pseudo hydraulic fracturing simulator and numerical reservoir simulation. Four types of fracturing fluids as follows: Linear Gel, HVFR-A (mixed with freshwater), HVFR-B (mixed with produced water plus surfactant as additives), and HVFR-C (mixed with produced water) were tested using an integral approach. The workflow in this paper was started by modeling the optimal fracture half-length using 2D/PKN model based on the slurry volume per stage. As a next step, the optimum pump schedule was created using 3D Pseudo hydraulic fracturing simulator. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis was performed on HVFR-B at different pump rate, final proppant concentration, and proppant size to investigate the proppant transport and production performance. Finally, reservoir simulation tool was utilized to investigate the changing in fracture parameters and evaluating the Bakken oil production. The results showed that HVFRs with surfactant is the optimum hydraulic fracture fluids that showed better performance in proppant transport, which responded by high fracture capability to improve oil production. The findings can be applied and compared to other unconventional shale plays, such as Eagle Ford and Permian Basin.