Investigating the Effect of Improved Fracture Conductivity on
Production Performance of Hydraulically Fractured Wells: Field
Case Studies and Numerical Simulations
Jianlei Sun and David Schechter, Texas A&M University
Summary
Unconventional reservoirs require extensive hydraulic
fracturing treatments to produce fluids economically and
efficiently. The main purpose of such treatments is to create
complex fracture networks with high-conductivity paths
deeper into the nonstimulated reservoir regions. Proppants
play an important role in maintaining good quality fracture
conductivities, which then greatly affect long-term
production performance. In addition, research on proppants
has shown a reduction in conductivities under downhole
stresses and multiphase flow behaviors. Therefore, it is
important to study the effect different proppants and
conductivities have on production performance by using
actual field cases.
To evaluate the production performance of wells
completed with different proppants, the authors proposed an
integrated workflow for characterization and simulation of
unconventional reservoirs. This workflow is unique because
of the stochastic fracture network generation algorithms and
improved unstructured grid generation techniques. Both the
analysis of field production data and numerical simulations
were performed on eight wells in the CAPA field of North
Dakota. For the field data analysis, three public data
resources were reviewed to prepare a summary of reservoir
properties, fracture properties, proppant properties, and
production history. For the numerical simulations, all of the
wells were modeled and simulated by using the proposed
workflow. Finally, sensitivity analyses were carried out to
investigate the effects of fracture conductivities and natural
fractures.
After completing the field case studies and reservoir
simulations, it was concluded that with the same fracture
design, higher fracture conductivity improves the production
performance. Pumping a smaller volume of upgraded
proppants with higher conductivity not only improves long-
term production performance, but also justifies the additional
costs and reduces the overall operation time of the entire
hydraulic fracturing job. If natural fractures exist, the
stimulated reservoir volume was greatly increased as was the
production performance.
In this paper, field data analysis was applied in the Bakken
to demonstrate the integrated unconventional workflow. The
proposed unstructured gridding algorithms can be
incorporated into any preprocessor to handle complex
networks. Reservoir, fracture, and proppant characterization
and reservoir simulation of the field cases can help engineers
prepare and interpret simulation input and output.
_____________________
Copyright© 2015 Society of Petroleum Engineers
This paper was accepted for presentation at the SPE Hydrocarbon Economics and Evaluation
Symposium held in Houston, Texas, USA, 19–20 May 2014. Original manuscript received for review 3
March 2015. Revised manuscript received for review XXXXX. Paper peer approved XXXXX.
2015 Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology
Introduction
Due to the low permeability and porosity characteristics of
unconventional reservoirs, a stimulation treatment such as
hydraulically fracturing a horizontal well is usually required
to create complex fluid flow paths into the wellbore. If the
reservoir and fracture properties are the same, the more
complex the fracture network, the better the production
performance(Cipolla and Wallace 2014). Fracture
complexity results from interactions (Wu and Olson 2014,
Wu et al. 2012) between induced hydraulic fractures and
stochastically distributed in-situ natural fractures. On one
hand, natural fractures play an important role in this process.
Gale et al. (2014) reviewed common types of natural
fractures in 18 shale resource plays, and emphasized the
importance natural fracture characterization has in
unconventional reservoirs. Kim and Schechter (2009) also
applied fractal-based algorithms to characterize natural
fracture distributions, and Sun and Schechter (2014)
performed sensitivity studies of the impact natural fracture
properties have on well production performance. On the other
hand, hydraulic fractures not only connect and reactivate in-
situ natural fractures, but also provide high-conductivity
paths to the wellbore, especially when good-quality fracture
conductivity is achieved. However, under realistic downhole
conditions, fracture conductivities might suffer significant
loss from laboratory measurements due to the effects of non-
Darcy and multiphase flow (Hu et al. 2014, Vincent et al.
1999). Also, upgraded high-quality proppants might facilitate
the same effect and still yield high-quality long-term
production performance. Thus, it is very important to
investigate the effects different proppants or fracture
conductivities have on well performance through field case
studies and numerical reservoir simulations.
In the context of reservoir simulation of complex fracture
networks, several difficulties exist such as how to accurately
conform to complex fracture geometry with unstructured
grids, incorporate realistic fracture aperture distributions, and
handle fracture intersections. Both industry and academia
have already presented feasible numerical simulation
techniques as well as workflows for characterizing and
simulating unconventional reservoirs. For example, fractures
can be modeled explicitly (KAPPA 2015, Karimi-Fard et al.
2003, Mirzaei and Cipolla 2012, Olorode et al. 2012, Patzek
et al. 2014, Sun and Schechter 2014) as individual fractures;
or upscaled and modeled using the dual porosity/permeability
approach (Yan et al. 2013); or considered as embedded
fractures (Moinfar et al. 2011); or roughly modeled with fast-
marching approaches (Yang et al. 2014). Besides, field
production data has been incorporated into several numerical
techniques such as decline curve analysis, artificial
intelligence and data mining (Fuentes-Cruz et al. 2014, Gong
et al. 2014, Mohaghegh et al. 2011). In this study, another
objective of this paper is to not only present a novel workflow
1
for modeling unconventional reservoirs with complex
fracture networks but also demonstrate how to utilize field
data in reservoir simulators.
The Bakken Formation ranks as one of the most developed
shale resource plays in the United States. It consists of an
Upper, Middle, Lower, and an underlying Three Forks
Formation. The Bakken Formation has an upper seal in the
Lodgepole formation and a lower seal in the Nisku formation.
Decent natural fracture development (Pitman et al. 2001) and
well production performance (Tran et al. 2011) make the
Bakken Formation a good candidate for field case studies,
and thus candidate wells of this paper are selected from the
Bakken resource play.
First, an integrated unconventional workflow for
evaluating production performance of fractured wells will be
proposed with its key components being discussed in details.
Then, each step of the workflow will be examined through
field studies in the Bakken Formation such as reservoir and
fracture characterization, domain discretization, reservoir
simulation, and sensitivity analysis. Finally, conclusions will
be summarized together with future research plans.
Novel Workflow
Sun and Schechter (2014) developed an unstructured grid-
generation technique for discretizing complex fracture
networks. In the current study, this technique is extended to
a 2.5D perpendicular bisector (PEBI) mesh generator. As
shown in Fig. 1, an integrated workflow is proposed for
characterization and simulation of unconventional reservoirs.
In total, there are six components—fracture characterization,
reservoir and fracture properties, mesh generator, reservoir
simulation, visualization, and sensitivity analysis and history
matching. The preprocessor takes reservoir properties,
fracture properties, and user-defined meshing parameters to
generate input files for finite volume-based simulators. The
postprocessor generates output files and visualizes the
simulation results. Sensitivity analysis yields numerous
realizations of the discrete fracture network (DFN) to
investigate the fracture-related parameters' effect on reservoir
reservoir background mesh density, orientation, and type can
be obtained by iteratively updating the flexible Voronoi cell
centers. The force-based optimization algorithms assume a
mechanical analogy between a triangular mesh and a truss
structure. Given a set of initial Voronoi cell centers of both
fixed and flexible points in the reservoir domain, Delaunay
Triangulation algorithms can be applied to determine the
topology of the triangular mesh. Force-displacement of each
cell centers can be calculated based on a predefined mesh-
size function, and then used to iteratively update cell centers
until convergence criteria is reached. Once all of the Voronoi
cell centers are calculated, the 2D PEBI grid can be
constructed and applied to each geological layer to obtain the
2.5 PEBI grid. Finally, simulator inputs are prepared such as
the pore volume of each PEBI cell, transmissibility between
two PEBI cells, cell center depth, as well as well-related
properties.
Reservoir and Fracture
Characterization
Reservoir Fracture Meshing
Properties Properties Parameters
2.5D PEBI Mesh
Generator(preprocessor)
Reservoir Simulation
Visualization(post-processor)
Sensitivity Analysis and
History Matching
Fig. 1—Integrated workflow for characterization and simulation of
unconventional reservoirs.
Input fracture geometry

production performance. Among those realizations, the most

Project 3D to 2D
excellent realization can be selected by history matching
versus production data, and being used for forecasting Fractures Reservoir
production. One of the key features of the mesh generator is background
that it can handle nonorthogonal, low-angle intersections of Non-
Refinement Fracture
extensively clustered fractures with nonuniform aperture uniform
around intersection
Optimization for
fracture background mesh
distributions. aperture
fractures and density and
clustering
The internal workflow within the 2.5D PEBI mesh orientation
generator is shown in Fig. 2. The proposed approach consists Fixed points
Flexible points for
around
of five steps: projection of 3D to 2D; calculation of fixed and fractures reservoir
background
flexible points; construction of 2D Voronoi; construction of
2.5D Voronoi; and computation of simulator input. To begin All Voronoi Cell
All Voronoi
Centers Cell
with, by projecting input 3D fracture geometry onto the Centers
horizontal plane, the 3D meshing problem is reduced to a 2D
meshing problem. This simplification is justified when most 2D Voronoi grid
of the fractures are perpendicular to bedding layers, and
therefore can be modeled with 2.5D PEBI grids. Then, 2.5D Voronoi grid
fractures and reservoir background are treated separately. For Compute simulator
the fractures, fixed Voronoi cell centers are computed to input
resolve fracture refinement, fracture intersection, and Fig. 2—Workflow for the 2.5D PEBI mesh generator.
clustering, as well as variable fracture aperture. Next, flexible
Voronoi cell centers are computed for reservoir background
from force-based optimization algorithms, where different

2 2015 Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology

Reservoir and Fracture Characterization
In terms of reservoir characterization, the reservoir
permeability, porosity, and thickness can be obtained from
core data, well logs, and well files. Fracture characterization
involves hydraulic fracture dimensions and fracture
properties. Fractal-based techniques (Kim and Schechter
2009) can also be used to generate stochastically distributed
natural fractures. The main purpose of characterization is to
analyze different resources of the field cases, and to prepare
input data for numerical simulations.
In this CAPA field case study, eight wells located in
William County, North Dakota, are used to illustrate the
proposed unconventional workflow and the effect of
improved fracture conductivity on production performance.
As shown in Fig. 3, the CAPA field is located 3 miles to the
northeast of and on the opposite side of the river from the
Banks and Camp oil field's sweet spot. The red square in the
upper left portion of Fig. 3 indicates the location of CAPA
field. Public data resources were analyzed such as the North
Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC) database,
Drillinginfo, and FracFocus.
Fig. 3—Top view of CAPA field in North Dakota.
More specifically, well files of the eight wells in the CAPA
field were initially extracted from the NDIC database. The
well files provided reservoir properties, completion, and both
short-term and long-term production data. Then, Drillinginfo
data provided similar data but in a more organized format,
which was used to double check the NDIC well files. The
connection between the different data sources was through
the unique well API number. Finally, FracFocus information
was used to extract information on hydraulic fracturing fluid
as well as proppant type, composition, and concentration.
All eight wells were drilled into the Three Forks Formation
by the same operator and completed using a similar hydraulic
fracturing design. For example, all of the wells were
completed with approximately 2.3 to 2.7 Mlbm of proppant,
in either 24 or 30 stages, with lateral lengths of approximately
9,300 ft to 9,800 ft, and fluid volumes of roughly 54,000 to
79,000 bbl. A significant difference between these eight wells
is that the first two wells were completed with 30% ceramic
proppant while the other six wells were completed with 100%
sand proppant. The basis for using ceramic proppants is that
these proppants have been found to increase fracture
conductivities and yield higher production rates. Also, in
realistic downhole conditions such as non-Darcy and
multiphase flows, the ceramic proppants lose less fracture
2015 Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology
conductivities than other widely used sand proppants
(Vincent 2002).
An adjacent Well X in this field was evaluated for
estimating reservoir permeability and porosity purposes.
From the Well X well logs, the matrix permeability and
porosity is approximately 5E-8 mD and 3%, respectively.
From a depth of 9,720 to 9,840 ft, roughly 26 core plugs were
taken for permeability and porosity analysis. The average
effective permeability to oil is roughly 0.0014 md, and
average total porosity after cleaning and drying is on the
order of 6%. Visual inspection of the cores show the
existence of micronatural fractures, which might cause the
higher values of effective permeability and porosity.
Therefore, we will use the effective measurements for our
simulation studies.
The files for these eight wells indicated that the thickness
of the Three Forks Formation is only 20 to 30 ft in the CAPA
field, which is two orders of magnitude less than the lateral
length. Furthermore, the overburden rock for the Three Fork
Formation is the Lower Bakken shale, which is considered to
be a barrier for hydraulic fracture propagation. Therefore, an
assumption was made that hydraulic fractures fully penetrate
the entire pay zone. In other words, the fracture height of the
hydraulic fractures is equal to the thickness of the pay zone.
For hydraulic fracture dimensions, fracture spacing can be
calculated from the length of horizontal lateral divided by the
number of stages. Fracture half-length is assumed to be equal
to the fracture spacing. There were no well logs or core data
available for determining fracture width; however, a material
balance equation can be applied for estimating fracture width
from fracture dimensions and pumped proppant volume. For
example, after completing a hydraulic fracturing treatment
and the opened fracture surface closes onto the pumped
proppants, Eq. 1 can be used to describe the total mass
conservation as follows:
= 2 ℎ 1 − ⋯ ⋯ ⋯ (1)
Where,
ℎ = fracture height, ft
= fracture half length, ft
= average fracture width, ft
= proppant pack porosity, %
= proppant density,
= proppant mass, lbm
The propped fracture width can be computed from the
fracture half-length, fracture height, proppant pack porosity,
proppant density, and total amount of the pumped proppant.
Table 1 summarizes the estimated fracture dimensions of
each well.
For fracture permeability estimation, Table 2 summarizes
laboratory-measured stress-dependent permeability for a
20/40 lightweight ceramic proppant and a 20/40 white sand
proppant. Under realistic downhole conditions such as non-
Darcy flow, multiphase flow, gel damage, and fine migration,
permeability would suffer additional decreases, which is not
considered in this study. Closure stress is assumed to be equal
to the overburden pressure (1.1 * TVD) minus zero pore
pressure, which yields a pessimistic estimate under realistic
downhole conditions. Then, the permeability was
3
interpolated from Table 3 based on the calculated closure One advantage of the unstructured grids is its flexibility to
stress. Conductivity was calculated by multiplying the conform to nonorthogonal fracture intersections. In addition,
permeability with corresponding fracture width from Table 1 grid orientation effect can be reduced significantly because
values. Because there are no permeability data available for each cell consists of more than four edges and fluid flow
30% ceramic proppant and 70% sand proppant, an occurs not only in the horizontal and vertical directions, but
assumption was made that 30% ceramic proppant also in other directions perpendicular to the edges. In this
concentration shows the same permeability as that of 100%. study, not only does the mesh generator generate flexible
For the well trajectory, instead of an undulated horizontal fracture refinement around the fractures, but also coarser
wellbore, a straight line wellbore geometry was used, and mesh size in the reservoir background. This feature is very
corresponding hydraulic fractures are perpendicular to the important when the number of fractures become large or/and
horizontal wellbore. Table 4 shows positions of the eight when natural fractures are included into the reservoir.
horizontal wells, and Table 5 contains reservoir dimensions Moreover, the mesh generator can produce a hybrid mesh
and properties, which are the same for all eight wells. with unstructured grids around the fractures and structured
Cartesian grids for the reservoir background, which
Reservoir Discretization and Simulation facilitates improvement of the central processing unit (CPU)
Once the reservoir and fracture properties are determined performance.
from the previous steps, the developed PEBI mesh generator Lateral Well
Well Toe Position Heel Position Length Depth
can be used to discretize both the reservoir and fracture
No. (ft) (ft) (ft) (ft)
domain into unstructured grids for reservoir simulations. All 1 (1320.5,1500) (10679.5,1500) 9,359 9713
eight wells will be simulated with black-oil models, and 2 (1343,1500) (10657,1500) 9,314 9689
simulated production performance will be compared versus 3 (1153,1500) (10847,1500) 9,694 10464
history production. 4 (1089.5,1500) (10910.5,1500) 9,821 9756
5 (1322.5,1500) (10677.5,1500) 9,355 10086
Fracture Fracture Fracture Fracture Number
6 (1163,1500) (10837,1500) 9,674 10193
Well Length Width Height Spacing of
No. (ft) (ft) (ft) (ft) Fractures 7 (1240.5,1500) (10759.5,1500) 9,519 10359
1 604 0.040 34 302 30 8 (1187.5,1500) (10812.5,1500) 9,625 10325
2 601 0.041 34 300 30 Table 4—Toe and heel position of each horizontal well.
3 776 0.048 26 388 24
4 786 0.048 29 393 24
5 748 0.050 24 374 24 Parameters Value
6 774 0.040 27.5 387 24 Reservoir length (ft) 12000
7 762 0.041 31 381 24 Reservoir width (ft) 3000
8 770 0.050 25 385 24 Matrix permeability (md) 0.0014
Table 1—Fracture dimensions of eight horizontal wells. Matrix porosity 0.06
Well radius (ft) 0.375
20/40 Table 5—Other related reservoir properties.
Lightweight
Closure Sand,
Ceramic
Pressure (psi)
Proppant,
Permeability(D) Input data for black-oil simulation such as
Permeability(D) pressure/volume/temperature (PVT) and relative
2000 426 235 permeability data are selected from the CAPA field available
4000 345 168 data. However, no bottomhole flowing pressure data were
6000 245 101 available for any of the wells; thus, a constant 4000-psi
8000 136 40 bottomhole pressure was used to compare the effect fracture
10000 77 23
conductivity has on the relative performance of the eight
wells. All of the simulation runs were performed with a
12000 48 7
Table 2—Stress-dependent permeability of 20/40
commercial simulator that is capable of inputting five data
lightweight ceramic proppant and sand. files: pore volume of each cell, depth of each cell, rock and
PVT type of each cell, transmisibilities between each two
cells, and well-related properties. Well 1 was used as an
Well Overburden Permeability Conductivity example to demonstrate how to build the reservoir simulation
TVD (ft)
No. Pressure (psi) (D) (md-ft) model, discretize the reservoir domain using unstructured
1 9713 10684 67 2679 PEBI grids, and perform reservoir simulations. A similar
2 9689 10658 67 2760 procedure was applied to the other seven wells and sensitivity
3 10464 11510 11 519 studies.
4 9756 10732 17 824 The unstructured PEBI mesh for the entire reservoir
5 10086 11095 14 712 domain of Well 1 is shown in Fig. 4. Enlarged views are
6 10193 11212 13 537 shown in Fig. 6 for between and surrounding the hydraulic
12 484 fractures. Fracture gridblock was modeled with Cartesian
7 10359 11395
12 612
grids as was the reservoir background. The two Cartesian grid
8 10325 11358
regions are connected with unstructured PEBI grids. The
Table 3—Estimates of fracture permeability under in-situ
stresses.
closer to the fractures, the smaller the unstructured mesh size;
therefore, both the fracture conformity and refinement are

4 2015 Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology

resolved.
After reservoir simulation of 800 days’ production, the
pressure graph is presented in Fig. 5. The color bar shown on
the right-hand side is the pressure with the scale between
4000 psi and 9500 psi; i.e., the warmer the color, the higher
the pressure. Surrounding and between the fractures, pressure
decreases to approximately 4000-psi bottomhole flowing
pressure, which means that these areas are stimulated and
contributing to the well production. In addition, unstructured
refinement surrounding the fractures successfully captures
the pressure-transient behavior from the matrix to the
fractures. Moreover, the use of Cartesian grids has the
potential to improve CPU performance, especially when the
pressure propagation front has not reached into the
background Cartesian grids, because the structured Cartesian
grids can reduce the total number of connections in the
Jacobian matrix and reduce solver time.
Fig. 4—Unstructured PEBI mesh (11,609 Voronoi cells) for Well 1 with a horizontal wellbore and 30 vertical hydraulic fractures.
X-axis and Y-axis are in ft.
Fig. 5—Well 1 pressure after 800 days of production. X-axis and Y-axis are in ft. Pressure is in psi.
Fig. 6—Enlarged views of unstructured PEBI grids surrounding the
fractures.
Furthermore, cumulative production from Well 1 and Well
2015 Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology
The same modeling procedure was applied to the other
seven wells, and the cumulative oil production vs. time is
shown in Fig. 7. There are 11 curves, among which the first
8 represent production performance of the eight wells and the
last three curves are from later sensitivity studies on fracture
conductivities and the existence of natural fractures. For the
purpose of comparison with production history, Fig. 8 shows
a similar cumulative history of oil production vs. time
prepared from public data sources such as Drillinginfo, Inc.
and NDIC. Even though there is no historical bottomhole
flowing pressure data available for more accurate history
matching, we see similar relative production performance
between the simulated production and the history production
data. For instance, from the history production data shown in
Fig. 8, Well 1 and Well 2 deliver virtually identical
production performance because of similar fracture treatment
design, fracture and reservoir dimensions, and properties.
2 are superior to the other six wells because of a greater
number of fractures as well as higher fracture conductivities.
Note that Well 6 shows an unusual production behavior after
600 days, which might be due to significant changes in the
bottomhole flowing pressure. Similarly, the simulated
cumulative production performance shown in Fig. 7 has the
same ranking of the wells. Well 1 and Well 2 cumulative
production curves overlap each other in term of production
performance. For Well 3 to Well 8, the fracture length,
fracture width, fracture conductivity, and the number of
fractures are similar, so only fracture height plays an
important role in the ranking; i.e., the larger the fracture
height, the better the production performance. Moreover,
Well 1 and Well 2 were completed with high-quality ceramic
proppant, whereas the other six wells were completed with a
lower-grade sand proppant. When comparing Fig. 7 with Fig.
5
8, a larger difference was found between the high-quality
proppant and lower-grade proppant for the history production
performance than the simulated production performance.
This discrepancy might be due to differences in proppant
strength and conductivity under realistic downhole
conditions. As mentioned previously, sand proppant with less
strength might become crushed, and its conductivity
decreases significantly if under realistic downhole conditions
such as non-Darcy flow, multiphase flow, gel damage, and
fine migration. On the other hand, high-quality ceramic
proppant tends to lose less fracture conductivities and
therefore, shows a more consistent behavior.
Sensitivity Analysis of Fracture Conductivity and
Natural Fractures
In the previous numerical simulations, not only did fracture
conductivities affect long-term production performance but
also reservoir properties. Therefore, in this section, only
fracture conductivity will be investigated to reveal the
important role it plays on reservoir production performance.
In Table 6, Case 1 is the base case, which is identical to that
fracture sets were generated by the stochastic algorithms (Sun
and Schechter 2014) with random fractal parameters due to
the lack of natural fracture characterization data. The purpose
of Case 4 is to demonstrate the effect natural fractures have
on increased production performance, and most importantly,
the capability of the unconventional workflow. Note that
almost half of the natural fractures are disconnected from 24
hydraulic fractures; thus, the natural fractures contribute less
to the total production than do the hydraulic fractures.
Furthermore, there are clustered fractures along the
horizontal wellbore in the 9,000 ft to 10,000 ft section. In Fig.
10, the unstructured PEBI mesh is used to discretize the
reservoir domain and the discrete fracture networks. In total,
26,393 Voronoi cells were used, with 17,605 of fixed
Voronoi cells to obtain the given fracture width and 8,788 of
flexible Voronoi cells to produce coarse reservoir
background mesh.
200
well1
180 well2
well7
well4

Cummulative Oil Production, MSTB

of Well 5 in the previous sections. Case 2 shows the same 160 well6
well3
conductivity but half-fracture width as Case 1. Case 3 is 140
well8
well5
different from Case 1 in that fracture permeability is reduced well5-28D
well5-NF
to 50 mD. In Case 4, additional stochastic-generated natural 120 well5-50mD
fractures are included in the reservoir domain to investigate 100
the effect of macronatural fractures.
Fracture width corresponds to the final volume of pumped 80
proppants, while fracture permeability corresponds to the
60
quality of the pumped proppants. These two parameters are
usually determined during the process of the proppant 40
selection and fracture treatment design. After reservoir
simulation of 800 days’ production, cumulative oil 20
production of four cases in Table 6 is shown in Fig. 7. The 0
plots of the first two cases overlap with each other, which 0 200 400 600 800
indicates the same production performance over the entire Time, days
production period of two different fracture treatment designs. Fig. 7—Reservoir simulated production for 800 days.
Therefore, it stands to reason that a good alternative approach
200
to the completion design is to simply reduce the overall
Well 1
amount of proppant and pump upgraded proppants with 180 Well 2
improved fracture permeabilities. Pumping smaller volumes Well 7
Well 4
Cummulative Oil Production, MSTB

of higher strength proppant will not only justify the additional 160
Well 6
costs per pound of ceramic proppants, but will also reduce the 140
Well 3
Well 8
running time costs for the entire hydraulic fracturing job. Well 5
Moreover, if we assume that the permeability of the sand 120
proppant in Case 3 is reduced from 14 D to 50 mD due to
100
crushing under realistic downhole conditions, the cumulative
oil production is reduced by almost one third from 120 MSTB 80
to 80 MSTB. Therefore, fracture conductivity does play an
important role in the long-term production performance, and 60
it justifies pumping upgraded proppants.
40

Case Fracture Width, Fracture Conductivity, 20

No. ft Permeability, D md-ft
1 0.050 14 712 0
2 0.025 28 712 0 200 400 600 800
Time, days
3 0.050 0.05 2 Fig. 8—Reservoir history production for 800 days.
4 0.050 0.05 HF+NF
Table 6—Sensitivity of fracture permeability and width. A pressure plot after 800 days of production is shown in
Fig. 11 and its cumulative oil production is added in Fig. 7.
A geometry schematic of natural fractures and hydraulic With the support of natural fractures, we see almost 20 MSTB
fractures is shown in Fig. 9. Natural fractures with two increase in the total oil production compared with Case 3, and

6 2015 Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology

the stimulated reservoir volume extends further away from
the horizontal wellbore due to several long natural fractures.
An enlarged view of Fig. 11 is around the toe of the
horizontal well as shown in Fig. 12. Not only do we see
increased stimulated volume due to the existence of natural
fractures, but the capability of the developed meshing
algorithms; e.g., fracture width and fracture geometry are
accurately conformed to with flexible mesh sizes surrounding
and between the fractures.
Conclusions
An integrated workflow was proposed to characterize and
simulate unconventional reservoirs. This workflow was then
applied to study the effect of improved fracture conductivity
on production performance of eight wells in the CAPA field
of North Dakota. During reservoir and fracture
characterization, public data resources such as Drillinginfo,
FracFocus, and NDIC were reviewed thoroughly for
reservoir properties, fracture geometry, fracture properties,
proppant composition, proppant concentration, and history
production data. Numerical simulation studies then took the
characterization inputs to develop step-by-step models of all
the wells, and compared production performance between
simulated and history production performance. Finally,
sensitivity studies were performed to reveal the effect
fracture conductivity and natural fractures have on
production performance.

Fig. 9—Top view of the reservoir in Case 4 with 248 natural fractures (green), 24 hydraulic fractures (red), and one horizontal wellbore (blue).

Fig. 10—Unstructured PEBI mesh (26,393 Voronoi cells) of the fracture networks in Case 4.

Fig. 11— Pressure behavior of Case 4 after 800 days of production.

Fig. 12—Enlarged view of Fig. 10 showing pressure depletion

around the clustered fracture networks.

For all eight wells with the similar fracture design, the
higher the fracture conductivity, the better the production
performance. For the last six wells with the same order of
magnitude in fracture conductivity, fracture height played a
key role, and the larger the fracture height, the better the
production performance. Sensitivity studies showed that the
same production performance can be achieved by pumping
smaller volumes of upgraded proppants with higher
conductivity, which will not only justify the additional costs
2015 Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology 7
per pound of ceramic proppants, but will also reduce the from Hydrofractured Horizontal Wells in Shales. AAPG Bulletin 98
(12):2507-2529.
running time expenses of the entire hydraulic fracturing job.
Pitman, J. K., Price, L. C., LeFever, J. A. 2001. Diagenesis and Fracture
With the help of unstructured meshing algorithms, complex Development in the Bakken Formation, Williston Basin; Implications for
fracture networks resulting from interactions with natural Reservoir Quality in the Middle Member. Professional Paper. Report No.
fractures were easily discretized and simulated to obtain 1653.
Sun, J., Schechter, D. S. 2014. Optimization-Based Unstructured Meshing
additional stimulated reservoir volume and improved
Algorithms for Simulation of Hydraulically and Naturally Fractured
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