What is Hydraulic Fracturing?

Current fracture propagation modeling methods cannot accurately reflect fracture propagation intricacy, providing only a few propagation routes.

Fremont, CA: Hydraulic fracturing is extensively used to extract scarce resources. Rock failures, complicated fracture development, proppant transport, and fracture closure are all aspects of hydraulic fracturing. All of these actions impact fractured well productivity. The four main areas where advances and difficulties in developing hydraulic fracturing of tight reservoirs are: hydraulic fracture propagation, proppant transport and distribution, hydraulic fracture conductivity calculation, efficiency, and pressure evaluation framework of multi-stage fractured horizontal wells. Current fracture propagation modeling methods cannot accurately reflect fracture propagation intricacy, providing only a few propagation routes.

Most of the present research on proppant migration and distribution focuses on modeling studies of proppant migration and distribution in a small-scale single slab fracture and indoor experimental investigations of proppant migration in a single fracture or branching fracture. While in confined reservoirs, hydraulic fracturing cracks are typically more intricate. Models that account for the effects of proppant placement and dispersion in fractures, fracture surface roughness, dissolution, diffusion, deposition, elastic embedding, and creep brought on by stress need to be improved for estimating complicated fracture conductivity. Initial reservoir fluid saturation and pressure distribution form the basis of most productivity models for cracked horizontal wells. Most research focuses on one part of the fracturing process. These studies' predictions of healthy performance after fracture often don't match field data. The study's results may be utilized to encourage the construction of tight reservoirs, and the publication also highlights possible future research areas in fracturing in tight reservoirs.

Petroleum consumption has been rising in China over the last few decades due to the country's rapid economic expansion. China focuses on finding unconventional resources, particularly oil, in tight rocks to meet the rising demand for oil and gas. Tight oil development lagged in China but has recently accelerated. The two stages of development are the stage of exploration and discovery and the stage of commercial testing and manufacturing. Many Chinese basins, like the Ordos Basin, Songliao Basin, Junggar Basin, Bohai Bay Basin, and others, have been discovered to have tight oil distribution. Tight oil has a total geological resource potential of 125 108t, preliminarily proven. However, Chinese petroleum engineers need help due to the distinctive features of restricted reservoirs.