Understanding Tight Oil Reservoir Hydraulic Fracturing Stimulation Using Two Wells Simultaneous Microseismic Monitoring Approach

The tight sand oil reservoir found in the Ordos basin is known for its very low porosity and permeability. Almost every well has been stimulated using hydraulic fracturing techniques. The average production for a vertical well is approximately 4–5 tons per day. Among such a large number of fracture jobs, enhanced production after stimulation does not always meet expectations. Since 2005, hydraulic fracturing monitoring services have been carried out widely in this field to improve fracture geometry understanding and optimize well placement. With the implementation on-site, real-time hydraulic fracture monitoring, the pumping procedure can be adjusted accordingly based on the mapped microseismic events. Based on the past hydraulic fracturing monitoring experience in this field, an average microseismic event detectable distance range around 300 m is expected for the case of geophones inside a monitor well. Two parallel horizontal wells were thus drilled at 600m apart. Horizontal section length is around 1,500m for both wells. The original hydraulic fracture plans for each well consisted of 18 stage stimulations, but were subsequently adjusted to 13 stages based on real-time hydraulic fracture monitoring results. Three monitoring wells were drilled from toe to heel as shown in Figure 1. These monitor wellswill also be used as water injection wells in later secondary recovery processes. So hydraulic fractures generated by the pumping from both horizontal wells are not expected to extend far enough to reach the monitor wells. With this favorable well layout, simultaneous dual-well hydraulic fracture monitoring was proposed and conducted. In order to obtain the optimized fracturing parameters first, the initial 3 stages of each treatment well was conducted at one stage per well i.e. stimulate well-1 and then move to frac well-2. Simultaneous hydraulic fracturing began after the initial six stages were completed.