Summary
It is well established within the industry that water injection mostly takes
place under induced fracturing conditions. Particularly in low-mobility
reservoirs, large fractures may be induced during the field life.
This paper presents a new modeling strategy that combines fluid flow and
fracture growth (fully coupled) within the framework of an existing
"standard" reservoir simulator.
We demonstrate the coupled simulator by applications to repeated five-spot
pattern flood models, addressing various aspects that often play an important
role in waterfloods: shortcut of injector and producer, fracture containment to
the reservoir layer, and areal and vertical reservoir sweep. We also
demonstrate how induced fracture dimensions (length, height) can be very
sensitive to typical reservoir engineering parameters, such as fluid mobility,
mobility ratio, 3D saturation distribution (in particular, shockfront
position), 3D temperature distribution, positions of wells (producers,
injectors), and geological details (e.g., layering and faulting). In
particular, it is shown that lower overall (time-dependent) reservoir
transmissibility will result in larger induced fractures. Finally, it is
demonstrated how induced fractures can be taken into account to determine an
optimum life-cycle injection rate strategy.
The results presented in this paper are expected to also apply to (part of)
enhanced-oil-recovery operations (e.g., polymer flooding).
© 2009. Society of Petroleum Engineers
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History
- Original manuscript received:
12 February 2008
- Meeting paper published:
20 April 2008
- Revised manuscript received:
14 November 2008
- Manuscript approved:
25 February 2009
- Published online:
28 October 2009
- Version of record:
28 October 2009
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