Reservoir Completion 109
Fibres. Introducing fibres into the fracture fluid acts as a net for proppant
stabilisation and can also enhance productivity (more porous pack) under low
closure stresses. They can also act to viscosify the fracture fluid, reduce proppant
settling and act as a diverter (Powell et al., 2007). The fibres are usually chemically
inert although they can be dissolvable if proppant retention is not required.
Because the fibres do not need to cure, the well can be put on production
immediately (Howard et al., 1995). Fibres are less affected by cyclic loads (Card
et al., 1995). Fibres can be mixed with RCP if required.
2.4.4. High-angle and horizontal well fracturing
As discussed in Section 2.4.3 high-angle and horizontal well fracturing is primarily
designed with multiple discrete fractures in mind. Such completions offer perhaps
the ultimate in productivity from low permeability systems, excepting adding
multilaterals to the mix. It is however easy to be optimistic in predicting the
production benefit and under-estimate the completion challenges.
Knowing the preferred fracture azimuth is useful for vertical wells. It is critical
for high-angle and horizontal wells. The techniques covered in Section 3.1.2
(Chapter 3) can be used with the addition of tiltmeters and microseismic detection
to determine the post-job fracture directions.
Assuming that fracture azimuths can be predicted, two opposing strategies can
be deployed for multiple fracture wells (Figure 2.84).
(a) A single well in a reservoir can generate the best performance using strategy (a)
with the wellbore parallel to the minimum horizontal stress (sh), that is the
fractures are transverse to the wellbore. The fractures will be parallel to the
long axis of the no-flow boundaries and thus generate increased pseudo steady-
state flow. On the downside, it is possible that the radial flow convergence
within the fracture into the wellbore creates additional pressure drops especially
with gas wells (Wei and Economides, 2005) or with high-permeability
formations. The perforation strategy must be a very short interval (e.g. 2 ft)
coupled with high shot density (e.g. 12 spf ) guns to minimise multiple fractures
(Lietard et al., 1996).
(b) In active water flood reservoirs, the alternative strategy (b), that is fractures
longitudinal to the wellbore, offers better potential sweep efficiency – reducing
short cutting between fractures on injector–producer pairs. Such a strategy also
provides fewer complexities with respect to tortuosity, fracture initiation, etc.
It is possible to use an analytical solution to approximate the combined fracture
productivity and compute the optimum fracture spacing and half-lengths:
1. Use a pseudo steady-state fractured reservoir inflow performance relationship
(Economides and Nolte, 2000c) accounting for the geometry of a single fracture
and its position relative to virtual no-flow boundaries. For transverse fractures
[case (a)], a reduction in fracture performance must be included for the radial
flow convergence within the fracture on the wellbore. For longitudinal fractures
[case (b)], there will be a benefit of improved connectivity between the fracture