After-Closure Analysis To Identify Naturally Fractured Reservoirs

Summary After-closure analysis (ACA) in homogeneous-matrix reservoirs provides a method for extracting critical reservoir information from pre-frac injection tests. This paper extends the theory and practice of ACA to identify the presence of productive natural fractures. Natural fractures are important to identify before conducting a stimulation treatment because their presence may require designs that differ from conventional matrix treatments. Literature shows that naturally fractured reservoirs are very susceptible to formation damage and require stimulation treatments to account for this issue. The historical problem, however, has been to confidently characterize the reservoirs pre-frac in terms of both the reservoir quality and the deliverability mechanism (fractures vs. matrix) before committing to these design specifications. This paper presents the results of a simulator used to analyze the mini-frac after-closure period to identify the presence of natural fractures. The simulation results are distilled into a field implementation methodology for determining the extent of natural fracturing and the formation reservoir quality. This methodology is also applied to a field case study to verify the practicality of the technique. Unlike previous mini-frac-analysis methods, this approach identifies natural fractures that are material to production and allows the engineer to distinguish them from "fissures" that are open only during injection and are not a production mechanism.