Two-phase type-curve analysis of flowback data from hydraulically fractured hydrocarbon reservoirs

This study presents a new type-curve method to characterize hydraulic fracture (HF) attributes and dynamics by analyzing two-phase flowback data from multi-fractured horizontal wells (MFHWs) in hydrocarbon reservoirs.The proposed method includes a semianalytical model, as well as a workflow to estimate HF properties (i.e., initial fracture pore-volume and fracture permeability) and HF closure dynamics (through iterating fracture compressibility and permeability modulus).The semianalytical model considers the coupled two-phase flow in the fracture and matrix system, the variable production rate at the well, as well as the pressure-dependent reservoir and fluid properties. By incorporating the contribution of fluid influx from matrix into the fracture effective compressibility, a new set of dimensionless groups is defined to obtain a dimensionless solution for type-curve analysis. The accuracy of the proposed method is tested using the synthetic data generated from six numerical simulation cases for shale gas and oil reservoirs. The numerical validation confirms the unique behavior of type curves during fracture boundary dominated flow and verifies the accuracy of the type-curve analysis in the characterization of fracture properties. For field application, the proposed method is applied to two MFHWs in Marcellus shale gas and Eagle Ford shale oil.The agreement of interpreted results between the proposed method and straight-line analysis not only demonstrates the practicality in field application but also illustrates the superiority of the type-curve method as an easy-to-use technique to analyze two-phase flowback data. The analysis results from both of the field examples reveal the consistency in the estimated fracture properties between the proposed method and long-term history matching.