A new rate-decline analysis of shale gas reservoirs: Coupling the self-diffusion and surface diffusion characteristics Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2018 Elsevier B.V. Forecasting production in shale reservoirs accurately has been of growing interest in the industry in recent years. Until now, various techniques to interpolate production have been developed. Among them, decline curve analysis models have been widely recognized as the most efficient and easiest approach to apply. Unfortunately, each decline curve model has its own limitations and will not allow us to forecast production in shale gas reservoirs with confidence. In this paper, based on the similar characteristics between shale gas production and self-diffusion of dense gas/surface diffusion of adsorbed gas, a new early-late decline model with two fitting parameters were developed by employing general equations of this two behaviors respectively. These flow characteristics cannot be addressed by traditional decline curve models. In addition, a detailed forecasting procedure applying this novel decline model in the whole life of shale gas production was proposed, which is reliable and easy to utilize. Furthermore, this proposed model was validated by numerically simulated cases and field observations. Good matches between forecast rates calculated using this novel method and numerically simulated rates/field rates were obtained. The comparison between this proposed method and traditional methods were further conducted, which indicated that this novel approach leads to more confident forecasts than commonly utilized approaches. This work will provide a theoretical basis for analysts in evaluating hydrocarbon production rapidly and efficiently in shale gas reservoirs.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

author list (cited authors)

  • Miao, Y., Li, X., Lee, J., Zhou, Y., Wu, K., Sun, Z., & Liu, S.

citation count

  • 28

complete list of authors

  • Miao, Yanan||Li, Xiangfang||Lee, John||Zhou, Yunjian||Wu, Keliu||Sun, Zheng||Liu, Songxia

publication date

  • January 2018