H. Yousefian; M. Fatehi Marji; H. Soltanian; A. Abdollahipour; Y. Pourmazaheri
Abstract
Determination of the borehole and fracture initiation positions is the main aim of a borehole stability analysis. A wellbore trajectory optimization with the help of the mud pressure may be unreasonable since the mud pressure can only reflect the degree of difficulty for the initial damage to occur at ...
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Determination of the borehole and fracture initiation positions is the main aim of a borehole stability analysis. A wellbore trajectory optimization with the help of the mud pressure may be unreasonable since the mud pressure can only reflect the degree of difficulty for the initial damage to occur at the wellbore rather than the extent of the wellbore damage. In this work, we investigate the failure extension in different arbitrary inclination boreholes under different in-situ stress regimes. Assuming the plane strain condition, the Mohr-Coulomb, Mogi-Coulomb, and Modified Lade rock failure criteria are utilized. We present an analytical equation to determine the optimum drilling trajectory of an Iranian oilfield. In order to predict the degree of wellbore damage, the initial shear failure location, failure width, and failure depth of arbitrary wellbores are determined. Then a new model is derived to calculate the initial failure area of a directional wellbore because it is more efficient in a wellbore stability analysis. The results obtained show that in the target oilfield, the vertical and low-deviated direction is the optimum drilling path. According to the results of this work, optimization of the wellbore trajectory based on the estimated failure zone is a reasonable method if a considerable failure zone takes place around the borehole wall.
A. Abdollahipour; M. Fatehi Marji; H. Soltanian; E. A. Kazemzadeh
Abstract
The permeability and coupled behavior of pore pressure and deformations play an important role in hydraulic fracturing (HF) modeling. In this work, a poroelastic displacement discontinuity method is used to study the permeability effect on the HF development in various formation permeabilities. The numerical ...
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The permeability and coupled behavior of pore pressure and deformations play an important role in hydraulic fracturing (HF) modeling. In this work, a poroelastic displacement discontinuity method is used to study the permeability effect on the HF development in various formation permeabilities. The numerical method is verified by the existing analytical and experimental data. Then the propagation of a hydraulic fracture in a formation with a range of permeabilities is studied. The time required for propagation of an HF to 10 times its initial length is used to compare the propagation velocity in the formations with different permeabilities. The results obtained show that the HF propagation can be significantly delayed by a permeability less than almost 10-9 D. Also the effect of HF spacing on the propagation path is studied. It was shown that the stress shadowing effect of HFs remained for a longer spacing than in the elastic model due to the required time for fluid leak-off in the formation. Also the propagation angles are higher in the poroelastic model predictions than the elastic model. Therefore, it is proposed to use the poroelastic model when studying multi-HF propagation in order to avoid errors caused by neglecting the pore fluid effects on the HF propagation paths.
