Case Study: Analysis of Stimulated Reservoir Volume Properties Through Application of Embedded Discrete Fracture Modelling

Abstract

Hydraulic fracture modelling has always been a challenging task due to the complex network of fractures that have been created in shale and unconventional reservoirs and its associated uncertainty. Primitive modelling of stimulated reservoir volume typically assumes extreme simplifications to hydraulic fractures that do not accurately model the complex dynamic properties of fracture networks. This typically results in large differences in Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR) predictions, rendering the history matching workflow less practicable. By applying Embedded Discrete Fracture Modelling (EDFM) in fracture modelling workflow, complex fracture networks can be explicitly modelled without a high computational cost and without the need for any fracture upscaling workflows. The proposed workflow for given field data exhibits the efficiency of the Embedded Discrete Fracture modelling workflow. The results obtained also showcases the estimated fracture network parameters and its dynamic properties for the field case. The fracture network parameters obtained are also compared against similar cases from literature. The results obtained from EDFM approach is compared against a uniform Stimulated Reservoir Volume (SRV) approach that uses porosity and permeability multipliers and the advantages of EDFM workflow are observed.