Fractured Reservoirs Modelling and Interpretation
Authors: Kuchuk Fikri J , Biryukov Denis , Fitzpatrick Tony 
Published: March 2015

Fractures are common features of many well-known reservoirs. Naturally Fracture Reservoirs (NFR) consist of fractures in igneous, matamorphic, and swedimentary rocks (matrix). Faults in many naturally fractured carbonate reservoirs often have high-permeability zones and are connected to numerous fractures with varying conductivities. In many NFRs, faults and fractures frequently have discrete distributions rather than connected fracture networks. Because fractures are often created by faulting, faults and fractures should be modeled together. Accurately modeling naturally fractured reservoir pressure transient behavior is important in hydrogeology, the earth sciences, and petroleum engineering, including ground-water contamination to shale gas and oil reservoirs. For more than 50 years, conventional dual-porosity type models, which do not include any fractures, have been used for modelling fluid flow in naturally fractured reservoirs and aquifers. They have been continuously modified to add unphysical matrix block properties such as the matrix skin factor.

In general, fractured reservoirs are heterogeneous at different length scales. It is clear that even with millions of grid blocks, numerical models may not be capable of accurately stimulating the pressure transient behavior of continuously and discretely NFRs containing variable conductivity fractures. The conventional dual-porosity type models are obviously an oversimplification; their serious limitations and consequent implications for interpreting well test data from NFRs are discussed in detail. These models do not include wellbore-intersecting fractures, even though they dominate the pressure behavior of NFRs for a considerable length of testing time. Fracture conductivities of one to infinity dominate transient behavior of both continuously and discretely fractured reservoirs, but again dual-porosity models do not contain a single fracture. Our fractured reservoir model is capable of treating thousands of fractures that are perdiocially or arbitrarily distributed with finite- and/or infinite-conductivities, different lengths, densities, and orientations.

Appropriate inner boundary conditions are used to account for wellbore-intersecting fractures and direct wellbore contributions to production. Wellbore storage and skin efffects in bounded and unbounded systems are included in the model. Three types of damaged skin factors that may exist in wellbore-intersecting fracture(s) are specified. With this highly accurate model, the pressure transient behavior of conventional dual-porosity type models are investigated, and their limitations and range of applicabilities are identified. The behavior of the triple-porosity models are also investigated. It is very unlikely that triple-porosity behaviorf is due to the local variability of matrix properties at the microscopic level. Rather, it is due to the spatial variability of conductivity, length, density, and orientation of the fracture distributions.

Finally, we have presented an interpretation of a field buildup test example from an NFR using both conventional dual-porosity models and our fractured reservoir model.