Optimization of the Productivity Index and the Fracture Geometry of a Stimulated Well With Fracture Face and Choke Skins

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Abstract
Summary: For a given reservoir of known permeability and dimensions, the proppant mass injected to the pay determines a unique proppant number. Unique to each proppant number, there exists an optimum dimensionless fracture conductivity that exclusively determines the optimum fracture dimensions.1 Impairments affecting flow perpendicular to the fracture surface are accounted for as fracture-face-skin effect. On the other hand, flow impairment caused by a reduction of the fracture conductivity near the wellbore is called choked fracture skin. Both effects have a large influence on the productivity of a fractured well. In this work, the performance of a fractured well is calculated with a direct boundary element method. This method provides the dimensionless productivity index, and the model allows for the presence of each of the two different skin effects. The fracture face skin was found to have a significant detrimental effect on the dimensionless productivity index, even changing the character of its dependence on the dimensionless fracture conductivity. The effect of the choke skin also was found to be potentially detrimental but less complex to account for because it can be represented as an apparent reduction in the proppant number.

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