Pressure-Transient Behavior of Continuously and Discretely Fractured Reservoirs

Authors
Fikri Kuchuk (Schlumberger) | Denis Biryukov (Schlumberger)
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/158096-PA
Document ID
SPE-158096-PA
Publisher
Society of Petroleum Engineers
Source
SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering
Volume
17
Issue
01
Publication Date
February 2014
Document Type
Journal Paper
Pages
82 - 97
Language
English
ISSN
1094-6470
Copyright
2014.Society of Petroleum Engineers
Disciplines
6.6 Reservoir Monitoring/Formation Evaluation, 6.6.4 Drillstem/Well Testing, 6.1 Reservoir Geology and Geophysics, 6.6.3 Pressure Transient Testing, 6.1.2 Faults and Fracture Characterization, 6 Reservoir Description and Dynamics
Keywords
transient well-test interpretation , naturally fractured reservoirs , dual-porosity model
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Summary

Fractures are common features of many well-known reservoirs. Naturally fractured reservoirs contain fractures in igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary formations. Faults in many naturally fractured carbonate reservoirs often have high-permeability zones, and are connected to many fractures with varying conductivities. Furthermore, in many naturally fractured reservoirs, faults and fractures can be discrete (i.e., not a connected-network fracture system). New semianalytical solutions are used to understand the pressure behavior of naturally fractured reservoirs containing a network of discrete and/or connected (continuous) finite- and infinite-conductivity fractures. We present an extensive literature review of the pressure-transient behavior of fractured reservoirs. First, we show that the Warren and Root (1963) dual-porosity model is a fictitious homogeneous porous medium because it does not contain any fractures. Second, by use of the new solutions, we show that for most naturally fractured reservoirs, the Warren and Root (1963) dual-porosity model is inappropriate and fundamentally incomplete for the interpretation of pressure-transient well tests because it does not capture the behavior of these reservoirs. We examined many field well tests published in the literature. With few exceptions, none of them shows the behavior of the Warren and Root (1963) dual-porosity model. These examples exhibit very diverse pressure behaviors of discretely and continuously fractured reservoirs. Unlike the single derivative shape of the Warren and Root (1963) model, the derivatives of these examples exhibit many different flow regimes depending on fracture distribution and on their intensity and conductivity. We show these flow regimes with our new model for discretely and continuously fractured reservoirs. Most well tests published in the literature do not exhibit the Warren and Root (1963) dual-porosity reservoir-model behavior. If we interpret them by use of this dual-porosity model, then the estimated permeability, skin factor, interporosity flow coefficient (λ), and storativity ratio (ω) will not represent the actual reservoir parameters.

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