[CCoE Notice] Dissertation Defense: Impact of Hydraulic Fracture on Waterflooding Oil Recovery from Vertical Wells

[Grayson, Audrey A]

Thesis Defense


IMPACT OF HYDRAULIC FRACTURE ON WATERFLOODING OIL RECOVERY FROM VERTICAL WELLS
CHENXI WANG

Date: Monday, May 2, 2016

Location: Energy Research Park 9.  104
Time: 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Committee Chair: Dr. Christine Ehlig-Economides

Committee Members:
Dr. Christine Ehlig-Economides
Dr. Qin Guan
Dr. Michael T. Myers


For the secondary production waterflooding, frequently, operators deliberately avoid hydraulic fracturing the vertical wells. However, in this research, we design a specific well pattern according to the hydraulic fracture direction and fracture injection wells. We propose to fracture injection wells to make a “plane to well ’’ flow pattern.
In this research, we build a homogeneous square-shaped reservoir model in the simulator. Given the minimum stress direction of the field, we layout the injection and production wells. We align injection well fractures in the same plane and production wells along a parallel plane. After fracturing, the injection water in adjacent injection wells connects to form a “plane to well’’ flow pattern.
>From this research, we draw a plot of sweep efficiency VS mobility ratio for different water cut values and we find that the sweep efficiency increases in this ‘’plane to well’’ flow pattern.
Since fracturing the injection well is easily achieved by merely injecting water above the formation breakdown pressure, not only does it require no proppants, but also we can reduce some extra injection wells. These factors stand to increase both profitability and recovery efficiency of the waterflooding.
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