Intelligent optimization of fracturing stage and cluster parameters for tight oil reservoir

Abstract

The Mahu oilfield in the Junggar Basin of Xinjiang has the characteristics of poor reservoir quality, large horizontal stress difference, and strong heterogeneity, which poses challenges in oil production due to the unclear hydraulic fracture geometry, large fracturing effectiveness difference among wells/stages, and the lack of automation in stage and cluster designs. To address the above issues, this study proposes systematically intelligent designs for stage and cluster parameters in the tight conglomerate oil reservoir in the Ma131 well area. First, through sensitivity analysis, the key parameters for stage division (storage coef fi cient, brittleness index, and minimum horizontal principal stress) are identi fi ed, and a stage division algorithm is developed based on the similarity of these key parameters. In order to quickly calculate the productivity of different cluster designs, a single cluster production prediction dataset was established by using the fracturing-production integrated numerical simulation method. Based on the results of fracturing stage division, cluster spacing and injection volume are quickly optimized using the above dataset, and the cluster locations are optimized with the objective of balanced fracture initiation and propagation. Finally, the automatic designs of fracturing stage and cluster starting from the well logging data is realized. Then, the proposed optimization method is applied to a practical well and both the production and pro fi t are increased with the optimized designs. The proposed method can ef fi ciently and intelligently optimize the stage and cluster designs for horizontal wells with the consideration of fracture propagation, productivity, and economic bene fi ts, which helps provide theoretical and methodological support for fracturing designs in unconventional reservoirs such as the tight conglomerate oil reservoirs in this work.

Keywords

Mahu oilfield / Tight conglomerate reservoir / Multi-stage fracturing of horizontal wells / Stage and cluster optimization

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Huiying Tang: Writing-original draft, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Qi Ruan: Methodology, Investigation. Liehui Zhang: Writing-review & editing, Project administration, Conceptualization. Dandan Hu: Writing-review & editing, Visualization, Methodology, Investigation. Jianhua Qin: Writing-review & editing, Software, Data curation. Yulong Zhao: Writing-review & editing, Validation, Methodology, Investigation. Yiping Ye: Software, Resources, Data curation.

Funding

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52374043) and the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52234003).

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing fi nancial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to in fl uence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We also appreciate the support of PetroChina Xinjiang oilfield by providing important software and data.

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