SEGJ Technical Conference

An approach to coupled fluid flow and geomechanics with the effect of locally varying stress during hydraulic fracturing

Abstract Hydraulic fracturing is a significant key to shale gas/shale oil developments because of the extremely low permeability of reservoir formations. The nature of the fractures developed through the fracturing decides the production of oil and gas and, therefore, predicting and monitoring the fracture growing become important subjects. The presence of natural fractures is often critical to the production of oil/gas. These natural fractures and other planes of weakness can result in complex fracture geometries. Critically stressed fractures are determined by dip and azimuth of the fracture planes with respect to the surrounding stress field, while the stress field can be altered by the fracture shear failures. This paper shows the significance of the time varying local stress caused by formation deformation or faulting in regard to the fracture shear failures. Iteratively coupled geomechanical and fluid flow simulation achieved by the combination of commercial software was examined by simulating a simple case of hydraulic fracturing. The number of fracture shear failures was decreased in the increased local stress, demonstrating the performance of the coupled simulation.