Optimizing Treatment Parameters for Enhanced Hydrocarbon Production by Hydraulic Fracturing

Abstract

A novel scheme is presented in this paper for hydraulic fracturing design, which integrates reservoir properties, operational limitations, fracture growth control requirements, reservoir production behaviour, and investment-return cash flow behaviour in deciding on the optimum values of various treatment parameters. The capability and robustness of the optimization scheme is demonstrated by applications to a tight gas reservoir for which various designs are obtained: maximum NPV design, maximum production design, a target production design, and a compromised design. Optimum designs are found to be different for different objective functions. It is demonstrated that maximization of NPV, or production, involves a high treatment cost, which can be minimized further by solving a combined objective function, but at the expense of some NPV or production. By trade-off analysis between production/NPV and treatment cost, 44% of treatment cost saving is indicated at the expense of only a 12% sacrifice in ptoduction/NPV. Various other design issues are investigated by sensitivity analyses.