Estimation of Well Interference by Integrating Fracture-Driven Interactions (FDIs) and Post-Stage Fall-Off
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AbstractHydraulic fracturing near depleted fractured rocks is one of the main causes of fracture hits. Fracture hits damage the parent wells in addition to the loss of fracture efficiency of the child well due to the massive loss of fracture fluids and proppant to the parent well. Child well productivity typically diminishes by more than 50%. This behavior is a function of tight well spacing and the depletion time of the parent wells. The current study aims to combine real-time fracture-driven interactions (FDIs) and post-stage pressure transient analysis (PTA) to estimate an accurate fracture half-length for each stage during the frac job.During hydraulic fracture operations, a pressure gauge is installed in the offset well(s) to measure pressure change during each stage completion in the child well to account for well interference. The connected fracture surface area (FSA) is then calculated using the post-stage fall-off pressure data. When FDI with an offset depleted zone is higher than a certain threshold, a higher stage fracture half-length is estimated, representing a lower cluster efficiency. The well interference value can then be estimated from the summation of these stages with high fracture half-length.Actual field cases from oil and gas shale frac data are presented with live FDIs measurements for each stage followed by stage-by-stage PTA. The preliminary results showed that more than 20% of the stages experience fracture hits due to the higher fracture half-length and lower cluster efficiency. Finally, the well interference value has been validated by actual production data.Integrating FDI measurements with PTA for detecting frac stage interference for unconventional wells presents a faster, more accurate, and cheaper fracture diagnostic tool, that will help optimize well spacing.
