American Oil and Gas Reporter - September 2024 - 43

SpecialReport: Hydraulic Frac Tech
patterns (lower graphics) predicted by the
fully coupled model. The left side shows
the uniform fracture lengths and drainages
we would expect from a near-perfect UI.
The base case is less uniform, and the
low case has highly variable fracture
lengths and uneven drainage patterns.
The negative effect of low UI on depletion
is partially mitigated by well-towell
interaction. Regions with less fracture
placement have weaker stress shadowing,
making it somewhat more likely that
fractures from adjacent wells will propagate
into those regions.
Figure 2 shows an example of the
input fracture lengths and conductivities
used in the simple modeling study. With
this simple approach, perfectly uniform
fracture lengths and conductivities can
be input into the reservoir model. A heel
bias in fluid distribution was assumed
for the base and low UI cases, resulting
in shorter fractures in the toe cluster and
longer fractures in the heel clusters. The
simple model shows much less heterogeneity
in fracture geometry compared
with the fully coupled model, which was
a goal of the comparison.
Of course, the point of these studies
is to understand the perfect frac stage's
impact on production and economics.
Figure 3 shows UI's effect on one-year
cumulative production in both models,
with the fully coupled model represented
by dots and the simple model represented
by triangles. While the figure includes
all four well spacings and differentiates
them by color, some of the symbols
are hidden by similar results in other
spacing scenarios.
The production results are presented
as a percentage of the base case UI production,
with the base case results on the
0% line (y-axis). The UIs for each case
in the fully coupled model vary somewhat
because of the distribution of parameters
used to simulate the different UIs in each
model. The UIs for each UI group in the
simple model are the same, since they
are input parameters.
The results from the fully coupled
SEPTEMBER 2024 43
model and simple model follow the
same trend, suggesting the learnings
from this work are not dependent on
the model.
Although the results vary somewhat,
the general trend is clear, showing a range
in one-year production of about 20%. If
UI can be increased from 0.25 to 0.75,
the models indicate that first-year production
will increase 10%. The gains
from further improvements in UI fall as
average UI improves, with first-year production
increasing about 6% when UI
jumps from the base case of 0.75 to
almost 1.00.
The benefits of improving UI also
diminish as production time increases.
For example, the simulations show an
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American Oil and Gas Reporter - September 2024

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