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• A 3D hydro-mechanical coupled model is presented to study hydraulic fracturing interaction with bedding planes. • Cohesive zone method is employed to represent the bedding planes explicitly. • Fracture propagation behaviors are analyzed under different patterns. Bedding planes are abundant in the continental shale oil reservoirs, but their impact on hydraulic fracturing is still not fully understood. To investigate the effects of stress condition, bedding plane's properties and layer lithology on hydraulic fracture propagation in layered formation, a 3D hydro-mechanical coupled model is presented. The bedding planes are explicitly represented by cohesive elements with degraded properties compared to the rock. The results show that increasing the stress difference ratio of the vertical principal stress to horizontal principal stress promotes the hydraulic fracture propagating across bedding planes, and the critical value of vertical principal stress required for hydraulic fracture crossing rises with the decrease of bedding plane's critical traction. Furthermore, when the critical traction ratio of bedding plane to rock drops below 0.7, the fracture propagation pattern changes from crossing to deflecting. Additionally, the extension pressure increases slightly, the fracture length decreases and the area of opening bedding planes rises. As the permeability of bedding plane increases, the fracture cannot cross the bedding planes and even stops extension. The layer lithology contrast also affects fracture propagation patterns. This study examines the fracture propagation behaviors under different patterns, including the opening morphology of bedding plane and the evolution of injection pressure and strain energy. The simulation results may provide useful insights for hydraulic fracturing design in layered formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an effective enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique in tight reservoirs, cyclic water injection has been extensively studied recently. However, very few studies have considered the impacts of loading-path dependent fracture deformation, i.e. deformation hysteresis. In this study, an efficient coupled two-phase flow and geomechanics model is developed to simulate cyclic water injection in a tight oil reservoir with the consideration of fracture deformation hysteresis. The embedded discrete fracture model (EDFM) is applied to handle complex fracture geometries. Different loading-path dependent constitutive models are used to describe the deformations of hydraulic fractures and natural fractures, respectively. Then simulation studies are performed to demonstrate the impacts of deformation hysteresis of hydraulic fractures and natural fractures on EOR performance. The sensitivities to injection rate, depletion pressure and soaking time are examined. The results show that the deformation hysteresis of hydraulic fracture has significant effect on oil production, while that of natural fracture has negligible impact. The effects of fracture deformation hysteresis are more pronounced under high injection rate and depletion pressure, but less sensitive to soaking time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydraulic fracturing is an important measure for the development of tight reservoirs. In order to describe the distribution of hydraulic fractures, micro-seismic diagnostic was introduced into petroleum fields. Micro-seismic events may reveal important information about static characteristics of hydraulic fracturing. However, this method is limited to reflect the distribution area of the hydraulic fractures and fails to provide specific parameters. Therefore, micro-seismic technology is integrated with history matching to predict the hydraulic fracture parameters in this paper. Micro-seismic source location is used to describe the basic shape of hydraulic fractures. After that, secondary modeling is considered to calibrate the parameters information of hydraulic fractures by using DFM (discrete fracture model) and history matching method. In consideration of fractal feature of hydraulic fracture, fractal fracture network model is established to evaluate this method in numerical experiment. The results clearly show the effectiveness of the proposed approach to estimate the parameters of hydraulic fractures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shale oil flow is commonly affected by the confined phase behavior, complex fracture geometries, and geomechanical effect, which are not fully considered in the conventional compositional simulators. In this study, a coupled compositional flow and geomechanics model is presented to incorporate these effects for more accurate prediction on shale oil production performance. The compositional model considering the confined phase behavior is used to model the multiphase flow in shale formations, in which the capillary pressure is introduced into the workflows of phase stability test and flash calculation. The embedded discrete fracture model (EDFM) is adopted to explicitly describe the complex fracture geometries. The deformations of hydraulic fractures and natural fractures are handled by different constitutive models. A mixed finite-volume and finite-element (FVM-FEM) scheme is used to discretize the flow and geomechanics equations, and the coupled problem is iteratively solved by the fixed-stress splitting method. Based on the proposed model, simulations are conducted on a multi-stage fractured shale reservoir to evaluate the effects of confined phase behavior, hydraulic fracture deformation, and natural fracture network on the production performance. Results show that the bubble point pressure is suppressed by the confined phase behavior effect, which leads to higher oil production. The hydraulic fracture deformation takes effect only when the hydraulic fractures cannot be treated as infinite-conductivity under poorly-propped condition. The oil production is greatly promoted with the increase of natural fracture density due to the increase of interface area between matrix and fractures. • A coupled compositional flow and geomechanics model with confined phase behavior is developed for shale oil reservoirs. • EDFM coupled with different constitutive models are used to describe the hydro-mechanical behaviors of complex fractures. • Effects of confined phase behavior, hydraulic fracture deformation, and natural fractures on oil production are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]