Simulation of Fracturing-Induced

Formation Damage and Gas Production

From Fractured Wells in Tight Gas
Reservoirs
D.Y. Ding and H. Langouet, IFPEN, and L. Jeannin, GDFSUEZ
Summary
Fracturing uid may jeopardize the production of hydraulically
fractured tight gas formations. Because capillary forces act stron-
ger in low-permeability formations, the invaded fracturing uid is
harder to remove. The increase of water saturation around the frac-
tured well affects the mobility of the gas phase, particularly in tight
formations where the gas relative permeability declines strongly
when water saturation increases. This damage might greatly
reduce the gas production in a very long cleanup period. This pa-
per presents numerical simulation techniques to account for forma-
tion damage with both a near-well model and a full-eld model for
fractured wells in tight formations. For the full-eld model, the
skin determined from an inversion is suitable for long-term pro-
duction simulations, and a sector model can be used to update the
well skin through a coupled modeling so that the full-eld model
can be used correctly over the whole life of the project.
Introduction
Wells in tight gas reservoirs are generally hydraulically fractured
because conventional completion techniques cannot provide eco-
nomical gas ow rates. Hydraulic fracturing is designed to increase
well productivities. However, the productivity improvement after
operations can be disappointing, particularly when fracturing indu-
ces damage of petrophysical properties.
Fracturing-uid invasion of the porous medium leads to an
increase of water saturation in the vicinity of the fractures and a
decrease of the effective gas permeability. This hydraulic damage is
difcult to be removed in low-permeability formations because of
high capillary pressure and the change of the gas relative permeabil-
ity in the invaded zone. The presence of fracturing uid inside the res-
ervoir might greatly reduce the production during a very long period.
Besides, because of long-term gas migration, gradual evaporation,
and change in pore geometry caused by burial and diagenesis, many
tight gas reservoirs are water undersaturatedthat is, the initial water
saturation in the reservoir is smaller than the capillary equilibrium ir-
reducible water saturation. The water undersaturated system leads to
additional water blocking and makes the damage more severe.
Other causes of deterioration of the well productivity are the
damage inside the fracture, which is related to proppant crushing,
proppant embedment, fracture plugging with chemical and poly-
mer residues, the inertial non-Darcy ow effect as well as the
multiphase ow effect, and the mechanical damage inside the res-
ervoir. Mechanical damage effects in the formation are generally
characterized by a reduction of absolute permeability caused by
polymer solids deposition near the fracture face, clay swelling,
and broken gel/ne migration.
We focus the study on hydraulic damage by simulating the full
process of fracturing-uid invasion followed by a cleanup; in addi-
tion, the damage inside the fracture and the mechanical damage are
also considered in the numerical simulation. Fracturing-uid-
induced formation damage has been studied in the literature (Hol-
ditch 1979; Friedel 2004; Gdanski et al. 2005, 2006; Shaoul et al.
2007; Lolon et al. 2007; Ghahfarokhi et al. 2008; Wang et al. 2010).
Here, we use a mathematical model based on the polymer ow with
a near-well ne-grid systemfor the formation damage simulation of
hydraulic fractures. Regarding full-eld simulations, the main prob-
lem is how to account for local phenomena in the vicinity of each
fractured well. Indeed, using a hybrid grid or a local grid renement
around each well requires too much CPU time and is practically
unfeasible for real applications. We address, therefore, the model-
ing of fractured wells on coarse-grid full-eld reservoir simulations
using skins fromthe inversion and coupled modeling techniques.
First, we present simulation results concerning fracturing-uid
invasion and the cleanup process using a very ne-grid near-well
model around the fractures. However, this kind of model, taking
into account damage phenomena generally at a scale from several
centimeters to several meters around the well and fractures, makes
the near-well modeling difcult to integrate information at the
reservoir scale. To simulate at full-eld scale, coarse grids are
usually used with a skin factor for the fractured-well simulation.
Several analytical skin formulae are proposed for the fractured
wells in the literature (Mukherjee and Economides 1991; Gdanski
et al. 2006). But these skins are not always accurate for coarse-
grid numerical simulations. In this paper, we show a method for
the determination of the numerical productivity index (PI) (or
skin) through an inversion procedure, which is appropriate for
long-term predictions. In the last part of the paper, we expose a
specic algorithm for the coupled modeling between a full-eld
reservoir model and near-wellbore models. The coupled modeling
provides time-dependent numerical PI (or skin) for the full-eld
reservoir model. This methodology allows us to simulate correctly
the production behavior in the transient-cleanup period and gives
also a numerical PI (or skin) for long-term production simula-
tions. The coupled modeling has been successfully applied to sev-
eral cases, including the study of time-dependent productivities of
a multifractured horizontal well in a heterogeneous media.
Simulation of Fracturing-Induced Formation
Damage With a Near-Well Model
Mathematical Equations. The invasion of water-based fractur-
ing uid and its back production are governed by two-phase ow
equations in porous media (Mattax and Dalton 1990) as follows:
@
@t
/q
w
S
w
divq
w
~u
w
Q
w
0
@
@t
/q
g
S
g
divq
g
~u
g
Q
g
0
;
8
>
<
>
:
1
where the Darcy velocity ~u
m
is given by ~u
m

Kk
rm
l
m
rU
m
with
U
m
P
m
q
m
gz (mw for water or g for gas), S is the satura-
tion, P is the pressure, K
k
x
k
y
k
z
0
@
1
A
is the absolute per-
meability of the formation, k
r
is the relative permeability and is as
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Copyright VC 2013 Society of Petroleum Engineers
This paper (SPE 153255) was accepted for presentation at the SPE Middle East
Unconventional Gas Conference and Exhibition, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 2325 January 2012, and
revised for publication. Original manuscript received for review 30 November 2011. Revised
manuscript received for review 7 January 2013. Paper peer approved 23 January 2013.
246 August 2013 SPE Production & Operations
a function of S
w
, / is the porosity, q is the density, l is the viscos-
ity, g is the gravity factor, and Q is the injection or production
rate. In this modeling, only diagonal permeability tensor is con-
sidered. The gridblocks are aligned with the fracture in the exam-
ples of this paper.
The pressures in the water and gas phases are related through
the relation of the capillary pressure:
P
c
S
w
P
g
P
w
: 2
This is represented as a function of water saturation S
w
. This sys-
tem is closed by the saturation relationship
S
w
S
g
1: 3
The water-based fracturing uid is composed of water and
polymer. In the modeling, the polymer is considered as a compo-
nent in the water phase and is governed by a polymer transport
equation (Lecourtier et al. 1992). In our modeling, the mole con-
servation (instead of mass conservation) is considered for the
polymer component
@
@t

/S
w
n
w
c
p
w
1 /
pF

divn
w
c
p
w
~u
p
w
Q
p
0;
4
where n
w
is the water-phase mole density, c
p
w
is the mole fraction
of polymer in the water phase,
pF
is the mole number of polymer
adsorbed on an unit volume of rock, Q
p
is the polymer injection
rate, and ~u
p
w
is the Darcys velocity of the polymer, given by
~u
p
w

Kk
rw
l
w
R
m
rU
w
; 5
where R
m
is the mobility reduction factor caused by the presence
of polymer. In a macroscopic scale, the mobility reduction factor
depends mainly on the polymer concentration, the salinity, and
the shear rate, which are measured from the laboratory. The ux
dispersion/diffusion is neglected in the modeling.
The well production rates in a gridblock i are calculated using
a numerical productivity index (PI) by the following formulae:
Q
g;i

k
rg
l
g
PI
i
P
g;i
P
f ;i
; 6a
Q
w;i

k
rw
l
w
PI
i
P
w;i
P
f ;i
6b
and
Q
p;i

k
rw
l
w
R
m
PI
i
P
w;i
P
f ;i
; 6c
where P
m,i
is the pressure of the phase m (mw or g) at the well-
block I; P
f,i
is the bottomhole well owing pressure in the well-
bore; and PI
i
is the numerical PI, which depends on the gridblock
sizes, the block permeability, and the skin value. The concept of
numerical PI was rst introduced by Peaceman (1983) and then
improved by Ding and Jeannin (2001). In the case where a ne-
grid system is used to discretize the fracture for a fractured verti-
cal well, the ow is linear inside the wellblock. The numerical PI
is calculated by
PI
i

K
frac
hw
D=2
; 7
where K
frac
is the fracture permeability, w is the wellblock width
(fracture width), h is the wellblock height, and D is the wellblock
length (for well at the block interface). If a coarse-grid system is
used or if the fracture is discretized for a fractured horizontal
well, the ow is radial or pseudoradial inside the wellblock.
In that case, the numerical PI is given by
PI
i

K
i
l
w
lnr
0
=r
w

; 8
where K
i
is the average block permeability, l
w
is the well length
inside the gridblock, r
w
is the wellbore radius, and r
0
is the equiv-
alent wellblock radius that depends on the gridblock sizes. There
is a direct relation between the numerical PI and the skin S. In the
case of the presence of a skin S such as the choke skin for the
coarse-grid simulation, the numerical PI is calculated by
PI
i

K
i
l
w
lnr
0
=r
w
S
: 9
Various numerical methods (Aziz and Settari 1979; Mattax
and Dalton 1990) can be used to solve these equations. Here, the
system is solved by using the nite-difference approach with a
Cartesian grid. The Euler method is applied for the time discreti-
zation. The pressure and the saturation, considered as primary var-
iables, are obtained implicitly with Newton-Raphson iteration,
while the polymer concentration is solved explicitly after obtain-
ing gridblock pressures and saturations. Upstream mobility is
used for both the water/gas and the polymer transport equations.
In general, the gas relative permeability is reduced in the
invaded zone because of polymer adsorption/retention, wettability
change, and water blocking. The reduction of the gas permeability
can be quantied from laboratory experiments (Bennion et al.
2000; Bazin et al. 2010). In the modeling, the effect of the poly-
mer on the gas relative permeability is simulated with imbibition
curves for the fracturing-uid invasion and drainage curves for
the back production. Although the fracturing-uid viscosity is
generally very high, the experiments (Bazin et al. 2010) show that
viscosity of fracturing uid in the tight gas reservoir is very close
to that of water, because most of the polymer molecules are
retained outside the formation.
In this work, we consider only the hydraulic modeling of fractur-
ing-uid invasion without considering the geomechanical aspects
for the generation of the fracture. We assume that the fractures were
already created and the half-length, the width, and the fracture per-
meability (or conductivity) are known. The fracture propagation is
not explicitly considered. The consideration of a fracture propaga-
tion (Behr et al. 2006) as well as the coupled approach (Miranda
et al. 2010) could be a future work. The leakoff during the fracturing
is represented by injecting an appropriate volume of uid in the for-
mations. The presence of a hydraulic fracture is taken into account
either by using very ne gridblocks for the fracture discretization or
with an equivalent skin factor for the coarse-grid simulation. In this
section, we show some simulation results with our in-house near-
well simulator, which uses very ne gridblocks around the fracture.
The damage inside the fracture is taken into account through the
fracture conductivity, and the mechanical damage is considered by
modifying the reservoir absolute permeability close to the fracture.
This model can simulate, with a good precision, the fracturing-uid
invasion and the cleanup behavior.
Numerical Examples. Example 1Hydraulically Fractured
Vertical Well. We consider a tight gas reservoir with a horizontal
permeability of 0.02 md and a vertical to horizontal permeability
ratio of 0.5. A hydraulic fracture is initiated from a fully pene-
trated vertical well. This fracture is extended to the whole reser-
voir thickness. The fracture half length is 50 m and its width is 2
cm. A quarter of the geometry is usually used to simulate the
hydraulically fractured well (Freeman et al. 2009). The size of the
domain is 550 m in the x-direction, 800 m in the y-direction, and
56 m in the z-direction (Fig. 1). This zone is discretized by
14345 gridblocks and the sizes of blocks are given in Table 1.
This fracture is discretized by 5 gridblocks along its length with
Dx 10 m and Dy 0:01 m (a quarter of the geometry). The
bold numbers in Table 1 are the fractured gridblocks. The dimen-
sionless conductivity C is given by
C
K
frac
K
res
w
L
; 10
where K
frac
is the fracture permeability, K
res
is the reservoir per-
meability, L is the fracture half length, and w is the fracture width
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
August 2013 SPE Production & Operations 247
(the fracture width is 2 cm; Fig. 1 and Table 1 show only a quarter
of the geometry). It is assumed that the fracture permeability is
2 D, which corresponds to a dimensionless fracture conductivity
of 40.
The considered reservoir is water-undersaturated, where the
initial reservoir water saturation of 0.2 is smaller than the irreduc-
ible water saturation of 0.28. The relative permeability and capil-
lary pressure curves are shown in Fig. 2. Because of water
blocking and polymer adsorption/retention, the gas relative per-
meability is reduced from 0.59 to 0.37 in the damaged zone (frac-
turing-uid-invaded area). A volume of 316 m
3
of fracturing uid
is injected into the fractured well (79 m
3
for the quarter of the ge-
ometry) during 1 day. The production starts on the fourth day.
The mechanical damage is rst investigated by reducing the
absolute permeability in a given depth from the fracture face. Like
the studies in the literature (Holditch 1979; Gdanski et al. 2005;
Ghahfarokhi et al. 2008), the results show that it has a signicant
impact only when the absolute permeability is reduced by more
than 99% in a depth of several to several tens of centimeters, which
seems improbable if the fracturing uid is correctly selected.
Numerical simulations show that the hydraulic damage is gen-
erally small for this fractured vertical well. This conclusion is also
observed by other authors (Friedel 2004; Ghahfarokhi et al.
2008). However, the hydraulic damage can be severe in two
cases: (a) a low conductivity fracture and (b) the presence of a
permeability jail. Therefore, we present only some results related
to fracture conductiviies.
Fig. 3 presents the area of fracturing-uid invasion around the
fracture for the case of the conductivity C 40. Figs. 4 and 5
present the gas-ow rate and the cumulative production respec-
tively for dimensionless fracture conductivities of 40, 4, and 0.4
with and without hydraulic damage. These simulations show that
(1) the fracture conductivity has much more important impact on
the gas production than the hydraulic damage, and (2) the hydrau-
lic damage is more severe for a low-conductivity fracture. The
cleanup period is short. It is conrmed that the hydraulic damage
is generally not very great for a fractured vertical well. In the case
of low fracture conductivity (C
f
0.4), the hydraulic damage can
reduce the cumulative gas production by 6% at 800 days. How-
ever, the hydraulic damage is much more severe for the fractured
horizontal well, which is shown hereafter.
Example 2Multifractured Horizontal Well. Consider the
same reservoir. Now, three transverse fractures are initiated from
a horizontal well with a distance of 250 m between them. A vol-
ume of 316 m
3
of fracturing uid, the same as the case of the frac-
tured vertical well, is injected in each fracture. A quarter of the
geometry is presented in Fig. 6. It is assumed that no gas ows
directly into the horizontal well and all gases are produced from
the fracture. The ow regimes inside the fracture are different for
a hydraulically fractured horizontal well and in a fractured verti-
cal well. The ow is linear in the fracture plane around a vertical
well, if the fracture is also vertical and the well is perforated
across the entire fractured interval, while it is radial around a hori-
zontal well (Fig. 7). The pressure drop with a radial ow is higher
than that with a linear ow. Therefore, for the same fracture con-
guration (same length and same fracture conductivity), a fracture
initiated with a horizontal well produces less than a fracture initi-
ated with a vertical well. We present some numerical-simulation
results with the near-well model and compare the formation dam-
age between the fractured horizontal and vertical wells.
Fig. 8 presents the gas-ow rate for this multifractured hori-
zontal well with different fracture conductivities (40, 4, and 0.4)
with and without hydraulic damage, and Fig. 9 presents the corre-
sponding cumulative gas productions. We observed that the
impact of the fracture conductivity on the fractured horizontal
well is much greater than that on the fractured vertical well. It
reduces the gas production by a factor of 10 on the horizontal well
when the fracture conductivity is decreased from 40 to 0.4, while
it reduces only the production by a factor of 1.7 on the fractured
vertical well for the same conductivity variation (see also Figs. 4
and 5). Moreover, the hydraulic damage in a fractured horizontal
well is also much greater than that in a fractured vertical well,
especially for cases with low conductivities. The hydraulic dam-
age decreases 22.3% of the cumulative gas production on 800
days for the fractured horizontal well with C 0.4 instead of
5.3% for the fractured vertical well with the same conductivity.
Another observation is that the production from one single frac-
ture with the horizontal well is much lower than that with the ver-
tical well, especially in low fracture conductivity cases. Of
course, multifractures can be initiated with a horizontal well to
compensate for this shortcoming.
In the fracture plane, a horizontal well is represented by a
point source or a small wellbore, while a vertical well is repre-
sented by a line source through the whole fracture height (see Fig.
7). This fracture plane is limited by its size, and changing the con-
ductivity (or permeability) in the fracture has much more impact
on the radial ow for a horizontal well than on the linear ow for
Fracture (50 M)
Well
8
0
0

m

550 m
Fig. 1Grid system for the simulation of the fractured vertical
well in xy plane (a quarter of the geometry).
TABLE 1GRID SYSTEM FOR THE SIMULATION OF THE FRACTURED VERTICAL WELL*
Gridblock Size (m)
Dx 10 10 10 10 10 10 20 30 40 60 70 80 90 100
Dy 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.3 0.44
0.7 0.8 1 1.5 2 3.5 6 8 10 15 20 30 50 50 100 100 100 100 100 100
Dz 11.2 11.2 11.2 11.2 11.2
* Bold numbers correspond to the discretization of the fracture.
248 August 2013 SPE Production & Operations
a vertical well. Low conductivity inside the fracture makes the
cleanup of the invaded water more difcult for a radial ow to-
ward a horizontal well. Therefore, the conductivity has a much
stronger inuence on the fractured horizontal well. If the damage
inside the fracture is great, the horizontal well production might
be far from what we expect. The conductivity in the fracture is a
key point for the success of horizontal well fracturing.
The near-well model can simulate details of the fracturing-
uid invasion and the impacts of different types of formation
damage on the well production. But this kind of model needs very
ne gridblocks around the well and the fractures, and is limited by
a near-well domain around the fracture.
Simulation of Fracturing-Induced Formation
Damage With a Coarse-Grid Reservoir Model
Although a ne-grid near-well model can be used to simulate the
formation damage on fractured wells, it is still necessary to study
the simulation of the formation damage with a coarse-grid reser-
voir model for the following two reasons: (1) a ne-grid near-well
model cannot take into account full reservoir information and pro-
duction scenarios, and (2) reservoir studies are usually performed
with a coarse-grid full-eld model, and it is necessary to integrate
formation damage information for the coarse-grid simulation of
fractured wells. The necessary full-eld information for the
hydraulically fractured well simulation has been considered in the
literature (Ehrl and Schueler 2000; Sadrpanah et al. 2006; Gataul-
lin 2008; Fazelipour 2011). Here, we address particularly the sim-
ulation of fractured wells with a coarse-grid reservoir simulator.
C = 40 hydraulic damage
C = 4 hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 hydraulic damage
C = 40 no hydraulic damage
C = 4 no hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 no hydraulic damage
1000
10000
100000
1000000
1000 100 10 1
G
a
s

r
a
t
e

(
m
3
/
d
a
y
)
Time (day)
C = 40 hydraulic damage
C = 4 hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 hydraulic damage
C = 40 no hydraulic damage
C = 4 no hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 no hydraulic damage
Fig. 4Hydraulic damage of the fractured vertical well with different conductivities (gas ow rate).
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Sw
(a)
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Sw
(b)
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

p
e
r
m
e
a
b
i
l
i
t
ykrw
krg
krg in the damaged zone
0
5
10
15
20
25
C
a
p
i
l
l
a
r
y

p
r
e
s
s
u
r
e

(
b
a
r
)
0.6
krw
krg
krg in the damaged zone
krw
krg
krg in the damaged zone
Fig. 2Relative permeability and capillary pressure. (a) Hyster-
esis of gas relative permeability; (b) capillary pressure.
Polymer concentration Pressure distribution
1
.
0
6

m
Fracture (50 m) Fracture (50 m)
1
.
0
6

m
Polymer
concentration
(ppm)
Pressure
(bar)
1500
1350
1200
1050
900
750
600
450
425
423
421
419
417
415
413
411
409
407
405
300
150
0
Fig. 3Area of the fracturing-uid invasion.
August 2013 SPE Production & Operations 249
For the coarse-grid simulation, an equivalent wellbore radius
or skin factor is usually used for the fractured wells. However,
there is not a standard approach to provide these equivalent pa-
rameters, especially for nite-conductivity-fractured horizontal
wells. For example, the analytical choke skin formula (Mukherjee
and Economides 1991; Economides et al. 2010), which is pro-
posed for accounting for the radial ow around a horizontal well
in the fracture plane, is not always suitable for numerical simula-
tions in complex cases, as shown in the examples hereafter. Gdan-
ski et al. (2006) proposed to use a face skin factor, which is a
function of the saturation and the relative permeability, to take
into account the fracturing uid-induced formation damage and
cleanup effect. That approach was developed to simulate transient
cleanup behavior with a ne-grid model. The obtained face skin
can be used for coarse-grid simulations for a fractured vertical
well in a homogeneous media. Here, we present an inversion
approach to determine the skin or the numerical PI, which is also
suitable for a multifractured horizontal well and in a heterogene-
ous media.
Determination of Skins Through Inversion. A coarse-grid
model cannot correctly simulate the transient behavior during the
cleanup period because of the large sizes of the wellblocks (and/
or the fracture block). However, an equivalent skin or numerical
PI value used for long-term production simulation can be deter-
mined through an inversion procedure (Ding and Renard 2005).
First, we perform a simulation with a ne-grid near-well
model, as presented in the previous part, around a near-well do-
main. Then, we perform a coarse-grid simulation in the same do-
main with a standard reservoir simulator without considering the
hydraulic damage effectthat is, without simulating the fractur-
ing-uid invasion and the water production. The damage effects
are indirectly considered using skin factors in the standard reser-
voir simulator. We match the long-term gas production (after the
cleanup period) between a coarse-grid model and a ne-grid for-
mation-damage model in a same near-well domain by inversion.
We optimize the skin factors for the following problem:
W
e
l
l
Fracture (50 M)
550 m
8
0
0

m
Fracture (50 M)
Fig. 6Discretization for the multifractured well simulation (a
quarter of the geometry).
vertical well
horizontal well
horizontal well horizontal well
vertical well
horizontal well
horizontal well horizontal well
vertical well Vertical well
horizontal well
horizontal well horizontal well
horizontal well horizontal well
horizontal well Horizontal well
(a)
(b)
Fig. 7Flow regimes inside the fracture. Flow around (a) a frac-
tured vertical well and (b) a fractured horizontal well.
C = 40 hydraulic damage
C = 4 hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 hydraulic damage
C = 40 no hydraulic damage
C = 4 no hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 no hydraulic damage
C = 40 hydraulic damage
C = 4 hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 hydraulic damage
C = 40 no hydraulic damage
C = 4 no hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 no hydraulic damage
0.01
0.1
1
10
1000 100 10 1
Time (day)
C = 40 hydraulic damage
C = 4 hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 hydraulic damage
C = 40 no hydraulic damage
C = 4 no hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 no hydraulic damage
C
u
m
u
l
a
t
i
v
e

g
a
s

p
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n

(

1
0
6

m
3
)
Fig. 5Hydraulic damage of the fractured vertical well with different conductivities (cumulative gas production).
250 August 2013 SPE Production & Operations
JS
1
; ; S
L

1
2
1
N
X
N
n1
Q
n
q
n
S
1
; ; S
L

2
; 11
where S
l
is the skin factor on the wellblock l (l 1, , L) in the
standard reservoir simulator, q is the well ow rate calculated by
the reservoir simulator without considering the physics of formation
damage, Q is the well ow rate calculated by the near-well model,
and N represents the sampling points. We search for the optimal
skin values so that the objective function (Eq. 8) is minimal. It is
sometimes more convenient to search for the optimal numerical PIs
instead of skins to minimize the objective function. It has to be men-
tioned that the presence of a hydraulic fracture can generate a nega-
tive numerical PI with Peacemans well model, which cannot be
used by a standard reservoir simulator. Here, we use the well model
proposed by Ding and Chaput (1999), which modies transmissibil-
ities around the fracture, for the coarse-grid simulation.
Numerical Examples. Example 3Coarse-Grid Simulation for
a Fractured Vertical Well. Consider a reservoir of 10001000
50 m. The reservoir is homogeneous, with horizontal permeability
0.02 md, vertical permeability 0.01 md, and porosity 0.1. A uni-
form Cartesian grid with 20 blocks in the x-direction, 20 blocks in
the y-direction, and ve blocks in the z-direction, is used for the
full-eld simulation, with a standard two-phase ow reservoir
simulator. The gridblock size is Dx 50 m, Dy 50 m, and
Dz 10 m.
A fractured vertical well, with a fracture half-length of 50 m
and a fracture width of 1 cm, is considered. The fracture perme-
ability is 2 D, which corresponds to a dimensionless fracture con-
ductivity of 20 (the fracture width is 1 cm). This vertical well is
fully penetrated and located at the block (15, 15) in the xy-plane.
The fracture is oriented in the x-direction, and is opened through
the whole thickness of the reservoir. A volume of 328 m
3
of frac-
tured uid is injected into the reservoir to create the fracture. The
production starts at the fourth day. The relative permeability and
capillary pressure curves are the same as shown in Fig. 2.
In the coarse-grid simulation, a source/sink is considered in
the wellblocks (Fig. 10a). The formation damage caused by the
fracturing-uid invasion cannot be considered with this coarse-
grid simulation. To get a reference solution, the grid is locally
rened around the fracture as shown in Fig. 10b and Table 2, and
the near-well model approach is used to simulate fracturing-
induced formation damage. For this particular case, the use of an
analytical equivalent wellbore radius (or analytical skin) is con-
venient, because the fracture conductivity is high (C 20) and
the hydraulic damage is small for a fractured vertical well. Fig. 11
shows a comparison between the coarse-grid simulation with the
equivalent wellbore radius and the reference solution for the gas
ow rate. It is found that the long-term production is very well
simulated with the coarse-grid model, but it cannot give correct
results for the short time period (approximately 30 to 40 days).
This inaccurate simulation in the short-term period is related to
two main factors:
. . . . . .
C = 40 hydraulic damage
C = 4 hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 hydraulic damage
C = 40 no hydraulic damage
C = 4 no hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 no hydraulic damage
C = 40 hydraulic damage
C = 4 hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 hydraulic damage
C = 40 no hydraulic damage
C = 4 no hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 no hydraulic damage
1000
10000
100000
1000000
C = 40 hydraulic damage
C = 4 hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 hydraulic damage
C = 40 no hydraulic damage
C = 4 no hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 no hydraulic damage
G
a
s

f
l
o
w

r
a
t
e

(
m
3
/
d
a
y
)
1000 100 10 1
Time (day)
Fig. 8Hydraulic damage of a fractured horizontal well with different conductivities (gas ow rate).
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
C = 40 hydraulic damage
C = 4 hydraulic damage
C = 0.4 hydraulic damage
C = 40 no hydraulic damage
C = 4 no hydrualic damage
C = 0.4 no hydraulic damage
C
u
m
u
l
a
t
i
v
e

g
a
s

p
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n

(

1
0
6

m
3
)
1000 100 10 1
Time (day)
Fig. 9Hydraulic damage of a fractured horizontal well with different conductivities (cumulative gas production).
August 2013 SPE Production & Operations 251
- The hydraulic formation damage associated with water
cleanup.
- The gridblock storage effect caused by the large wellblock
size.
For this high conductivity fracture initiated from a vertical
well, using the skin obtained from the inversion (without using
the equivalent wellbore radius) gives similar numerical PIs and
gas-production proles. The results are not presented here.
Example 4Coarse-Grid Simulation for a Multifractured
Horizontal Well. Considering the same reservoir geometry, pet-
rophysical properties and the same coarse grid discretization as in
Example 3, a horizontal well with three transverse fractures with
distances of 100 m between them is implemented, as shown in
Fig. 12. The horizontal well is drilled in the middle layer of the
reservoir, and the fractures are created through the whole reser-
voir thickness. It is assumed that all productions come from the
fractures and the well does not have direct contribution to the gas
production. Therefore, the three wellblocks [(15,13,3); (15,15,3)
and (15,17,3)] are located only in the middle layer of the coarse-
grid system. The half-length of the fracture is 50 m and its width
is 1 cm. The fracture conductivity is 2, lower than that in Example
3. A local grid renement is also given in Fig. 12b for the simula-
tion of the reference solution, which takes into account the
physics of the fracturing-uid invasion and its back production.
Fractured
well
Well
Fracture
(a) (b)
Fig. 10Grid systems for the fractured well in a full-eld simulation. (a) Coarse-grid simulation; (b) local grid renement for the ref-
erence solution simulation.
TABLE 2GRIDBLOCK SIZES AROUND THE FRACTURE IN THE LOCALLY REFINED ZONE
FOR THE REFERENCE MODEL
Block Size in x-Direction Block Size in y-Direction
25 15 15 10 5 2.5 1.2 25 15 10 8 6 3.5 2 1.5 1 0.8 0.7
0.6 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.44 0.3 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.085 0.06 0.05 0.04
0.03 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.6 1.2
0.01 2.5 5 9 9 9 9 8 9 9 9 9 5 2.5
0.01 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 1.2 0.6 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.1
0.06 0.085 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.3 0.44 0.7 0.8 1
1.5 2 3.5 6 8 10 15 25
0.1 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.6
1.2 2.5 5 10 15 15 25
* Bold numbers correspond to the fracture.
10000
100000
1000000
Reference
Coarse grid without coupled modeling
G
a
s

f
l
o
w

r
a
t
e

(
m
3
/
d
a
y
)
1000 100 10 1
Time (day)
Fig. 11Gas ow rate with the coarse-grid simulation using the equivalent wellbore radius.
252 August 2013 SPE Production & Operations
We perform rst a coarse-grid simulation with the choke skin
proposed by Mukherjee and Economides (1991). This skin is ini-
tially proposed for the analytical modeling of well performances
for fractured horizontal wells. Fig. 13 presents the coarse-grid
simulation results with the analytical choke skin and with the skin
obtained from the inversion Eq. 11. To calculate the skin from the
inversion, fracturing-uid-induced formation damage is simulated
with a ne-grid near-well model in a small domain around the
fracture, and the inversion procedure is applied to match the gas
production from 200 to 500 days by modifying the numerical PI
values (or skin factors) on a local coarse-grid system in the same
near-well domain. The obtained numerical PIs (or skins) are used
for the full-eld coarse-grid simulation. It is found that the analyt-
ical choke skin is not suitable for the numerical simulation, and
the errors are large in both the cleanup period and long-term pro-
duction. Using the numerical PI (or skin) from the inversion gives
much better results for the coarse-grid simulation. It gives accu-
rate long-term production calculation, but we have always inaccu-
rate results during a long transient cleanup period, which has a
signicant impact on the cumulative gas production in this case.
In general, if the transient cleanup period is short, using nu-
merical PIs (or skins) determined from the inversion can be con-
sidered suitable for the coarse-grid simulation. If the cleanup
period is long, the production during this period cannot be
neglected. In this case, we propose to use the coupled modeling
technique. This technique provides time-dependent numerical PIs
to improve the coarse-grid simulation accuracy during the cleanup
period.
Coupled Modeling for Fractured Wells
Coupled Modeling Technique. The coupled modeling technique
was presented by Ding (2010, 2011) for the coupled simulation
between a near-wellbore model and a reservoir model. Here, we
present its application to fractured wells. The algorithm of the
coupled modeling is summarized by the following steps (Fig. 14):
1. Run the full-eld reservoir model (RM) to the time T
0
, the
beginning of the coupled simulation.
2. Initialize the near-well model (NW) for pressure and satura-
tion using data from the reservoir model with appropriate down-
scaling techniques.
3a. Run the full-eld RM from time T
0
to T
1
.
3b. Run the NW model from T
0
to T
1
.
4a. Update numerical PIs for the full-eld RM.
4b. Update boundary conditions for the NW model using the
full-eld simulation results.
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 with a new time interval (from T
1
to
T
2
, , from T
n1
to T
n
).
6. Stop coupled modeling and continue the full-eld simula-
tion (RM) from T
n
.
Data exchanges between the reservoir model and the near-well
model are performed through updating numerical PIs for the res-
ervoir model and boundary conditions for the near-well model.
The updated numerical PIs correct inaccuracies in the coarse-grid
simulation.
The coupled approach is generally not CPU-time-consuming,
because the full-eld model is sequentially simulated. Moreover,
this method allows the implementation of a local timestepping
Well
Well
F
r
a
c
t
u
r
e
s
(a) (b)
Fig. 12Grid systems for the multifractured horizontal well simulation. (a) Coarse grid (wellblocks are in the middle layer); (b) local
grid renement for the reference solution simulation.
10000
100000
G
a
s

p
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n

(
m
3
/
d
a
y
)
Reference solution
Coarse grid simulation with the analytical choke skin
Coarse grid simulation with the skin from inversion
1000 100 10 1
Time (day)
Fig. 13Gas ow rate with the coarse-grid simulations.
August 2013 SPE Production & Operations 253
strategy (the NW grid, adapted to complex physics around the
wellbore and the fracture, needs smaller timesteps compared with
the timesteps on the RM model). The near-well model is used as a
predictor of the numerical PI on the full-eld reservoir grid. This
strategy improves considerably the modeling of fractured wells in
a full-eld reservoir simulation.
Numerical Examples. Example 5Coupled Modeling for a
Hydraulically Fractured Vertical Well. Consider again the frac-
tured vertical well with the coarse-grid model in Example 3.
Now, we perform a coupled modeling by constructing a ne-grid
near-well model in a small domain around the well and the frac-
ture, as shown in Fig. 15. Time-dependent numerical PIs are
updated for the coarse-grid model during the coupled simulation.
First, a coupled modeling of 50 days is performed, which
includes 1 day of hydraulic fracturing (fracturing-uid invasion),
2 days of well closure, and 47 days of production, with timesteps
for data exchange every 0.1 day. Fig. 16 shows the results of the
coupled modeling with both the near-well ne-grid and the full-
eld coarse-grid simulations. The near-well model simulation is
ended at the 50th day, while the coarse-grid simulation continues
with the nal updated numerical PIs. Both the near-well model
and the coarse-grid model give results very close to the reference
solution in the coupling period. After the coupling period, the
coarse-grid simulation can still give satisfactory results, because
the nal updated numerical PI is suitable for the long-term pro-
duction simulation. It shows that a coupled modeling of 47 days
during the gas production is sufcient. The areas of the fractur-
ing-uid invasion around the fracture are shown in Fig. 17 for
both the reference solution and the solution from the near-well-
bore model. The zones of the fracturing uid invasion are the
same.
It has to be mentioned that the reservoir is in capillary pressure
nonequilibrium initial state. The initial reservoir water saturation
is 0.2 and the irreducible water saturation is 0.28. Because the
Reservoir
model (RM)
Near-well
model (NW)
Reservoir
model (RM)
Near-well
model (NW)
Reservoir
model (RM)
Near-well
model (NW)
T
n
: end of the
coupled modeling
T
Update numerical PIs (skins)
Initialize the near-well model
Update numerical PIs (skins)
Update numerical PIs (skins)
Reservoir
model (RM)
Near-well
model (NW)
T
0
: start of the
coupled modeling
Update boundary conditions
Update boundary conditions
Update boundary conditions
RM(T
0
)
RM(T
1
)
RM(T
2
)
RM(T
n
)
NW(T
0
)
NW(T
1
)
NW(T
2
)
NW(T
n
)
Fig. 14Coupled modeling algorithm.
Well
Well
(a) (b)
Fig. 15Grid systems for the coupled simulation. (a) Full-eld coarse-grid model; (b) near-well ne-grid model.
254 August 2013 SPE Production & Operations
coarse-grid wellblock is very large, almost all injected fracturing
uid is blocked in the coarse wellblock and cannot be reproduced.
The water (fracturing uid) production cannot be correctly simu-
lated with the coarse-grid system. However, the prediction of
water production is not always required if we are particularly
interested in the gas production with a full-eld model.
Example 6Coupled Modeling for a Multifractured
Horizontal Well. Now, let us consider the coupled modeling for
a multifractured horizontal well. Consider the same case as
described in Example 4. The grid systems for the coupled model-
ing are given in Fig. 18, where the coarse grid is identical to that
in Example 4 and a very ne grid is used for the near-well model
10000
1 10
Time (day)
100
100000
1000000
G
a
s

p
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n

(
m
3
/
d
a
y
)
Reference
Coarse grid with coupled modeling
Near-well model
Coarse grid with a constant skin
Fig. 16Gas ow rate from the coupled modeling.
4
.
4

m
4
.
4

m
Sw
(a) (b)
Sw
Near-well model
Reference Solution
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
Fig. 17Area of fracturing-uid invasion. (a) Near-well model; (b) reference solution.
Well
Well
(a) (b)
Fig. 18Grid systems for the coupled modeling of the multifractured horizontal well. (a) Full-eld coarse-grid model; (b) near-well
ne-grid model.
August 2013 SPE Production & Operations 255
simulation around the fracture. Both homogeneous and heteroge-
neous media are considered.
The cleanup period is very long for this multifractured hori-
zontal well, as shown in Example 4. Therefore, a long duration is
required for the coupled modeling. Fig. 19 presents the results of
the coupled simulation for the gas ow rate in the homogeneous
case with a coupled duration of 300 days. The results of the coupled
modeling are very close to the reference solution. The coarse-grid
simulation shows a very high gas rate at the rst step; then, the nu-
merical PI is corrected to get a reasonable value. Fig. 20 shows the
gas ow rate for a coupled modeling of 100 days. In spite of a rela-
tively long duration of the coupled modeling, the results are not
good enough and the coarse-grid simulation starts to diverge at 100
days because of the long cleanup period required for this low-con-
ductivity multifractured well.
For the heterogeneous case, the permeability distribution is
generated with a geostatistical model in a stratigraphic ne grid
with block sizes of 10 m in the x-direction and 10 m in the y-
direction. The average horizontal permeability is 0.02 md and the
vertical and horizontal permeability ratio is 0.5. An upscaling pro-
cedure is applied to get the equivalent coarse-grid permeability
for the coarse-grid reservoir model (Fig. 21a). The near-well
model permeabilities, which are obtained by using a downscaling
(if a near-well gridblock is smaller than the geostatistical grid-
block) and an upscaling (if a near-well gridblock is larger than the
geostatistical gridblock) technique, are shown in Fig. 21b. To get
the reference solution, a local grid renement with the same per-
meability as in the near-well model is used around the fracture.
Fig. 22 presents the simulation results for a coupled modeling of
300 days in this heterogeneous medium, and Fig. 23 presents the
results for a coupled modeling of 100 days. The coarse-grid simu-
lation gives very satisfactory results in the heterogeneous medium
for both coupled modeling of 100 days and 300 days.
The required period for the coupled modeling is generally
unknown, because we dont know a priori the cleanup duration
for a real application. However, an analysis of numerical PI varia-
tions during the coupled modeling can provide information on the
10000
100000
G
a
s

r
a
t
e

(
m
3
/
d
a
y
)
Reference
Coarse grid with coupled modeling
Near-well model
1000 100 10 1
Time (day)
Fig. 19Gas ow rate for a coupled modeling of 300 days for
the multifractured well in the homogeneous medium.
10000
100000
G
a
s

r
a
t
e

(
m
3
/
d
a
y
)
Reference
Coarse grid with coupled modeling
Near-well model
1000 100 10 1
Time (day)
Fig. 20Gas ow rate for a coupled modeling of 100 days for
the multifractured well in the homogeneous medium.
1000 m
(a) (b)
1
0
0
0

m
350 m
4
5
0

m
K (mD)
K (mD)
0.07
0.063
0.056
0.049
0.042
0.035
0.028
0.021
0.014
0.007
0.07
0.063
0.056
0.049
0.042
0.035
0.028
0.021
0.014
0.007
0
Fig. 21Permeability distribution for the coupled modeling in the heterogeneous medium. (a) Coarse-grid permeability (middle
layer); (b) permeability in the near-well model (middle layer).
10000
100000
G
a
s

p
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n

(
m
3
/
d
a
y
)
Reference
Coarse grid with coupled modeling
Near-well model
1000 100 10 1
Time (day)
Fig. 22Gas ow rate for a coupled modeling of 300 days in
the heterogeneous medium.
256 August 2013 SPE Production & Operations
necessary duration for a coupled simulation. For example, it is
reasonable to stop a coupled modeling when the numerical PI var-
iation is small. The analysis of the required duration for a coupled
modeling is essential for the success of a coupled simulation in
eld applications and is an ongoing effort.
Conclusions
The fracturing-uid-induced formation damage on a fractured
well in tight gas reservoirs has been studied using a near-well
model. The hydraulic damage can be severe particularly in low-
conductivity fracture cases or with specic relative permeability
curves. Moreover, numerical models have shown that the damage
in a fractured horizontal well can be much greater than that in a
fractured vertical well. The fracture conductivity is the key issue
for the gas production with fractured horizontal wells in very low-
permeability reservoirs.
We also examined fractured wells on coarse-grid full-eld
simulations in tight reservoirs. An analytical skin cannot, in gen-
eral, correctly model well performances with a coarse-grid simu-
lation. However, an inversion procedure can be used to determine
a numerical skin, which is suitable to simulate long-term well pro-
ductions. But using a constant skin cannot correctly simulate the
transient behavior during the long cleanup period and predict cu-
mulative gas productions.
To simulate the whole production behavior of fractured wells,
especially the transient behavior during the long cleanup period,
with a coarse-grid model, the coupled modeling technique can be
used. A sector model for determining skin during transient ow is
coupled with a full-eld reservoir simulator to make appropriate
adjustments to the well skin factors so that ow behavior in the
full-eld model can be modeled correctly using variable skin fac-
tors over the whole life of the project. The coupling algorithm is
validated on an example of multifractured wells in a heterogene-
ous media.
Nomenclature
c
p
w
mole fraction of polymer in water
C conductivity
D wellblock length
g gravity
h wellblock height
kr relative permeability
K absolute permeability tensor
L fracture half length
PI productivity index
q well ow rate obtained from the near-well model
Q well ow rate
r
w
wellbore radius
r
0
equivalent wellblock radius
R
m
mobility reduction factor
S skin
S
m
saturation of the phase m
t time
u velocity
w fracture width
x,y,z coordinates
Dx,Dy,Dz gridblock sizes
l viscosity

pF
polymer absorbed on the rock
n mole density
q density
/ porosity
U potential
Subscripts
frac fracture
o oil
p polymer
res reservoir
w water
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank GDFSUEZ and IFPEN for sup-
porting the publication of this work.
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Didier-Yu Ding is a Principal Research Engineer at IFP in Rueil
Malmaison, France. His research interests include numerical
modeling, reservoir simulation and characterization, complex
wells, and near-well flow. He holds a BS degree in mathemat-
ics from Peking University and MS and PhD degrees in applied
mathematics from the Universite de Paris.
Hoel Langouet is a Research Engineer at EDF R&D in the field
of quality measurements and uncertainties. He holds an MSc
degree in applied mathematics from the Paris VI University
and a PhD degree, also in applied mathematics, from IFP
Energies nouvelles and University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.
Laurent Jeannin joined GDFSUEZ E&P International in 2008 as
Senior Reservoir Engineer. He worked from 19982008 as a
Research Geoscientist at IFPEN in the Transfer in Porous Media
and Mechanics Departments. He holds a Masters degree from
Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne and a PhDdegree in physics.
258 August 2013 SPE Production & Operations