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Tight gas is the term commonly used to refer to low permeability reservoirs that produce mainly dry natural gas. Many of the low permeability reservoirs that have been developed in the past are sandstone, but significant quantities of gas are also produced from low permeability carbonates, shales, and coal seams. Production of gas from coal seams is covered in a separate chapter in this handbook. In this chapter, production of gas from tight sandstones is the predominant theme. However, much of the same technology applies to tight carbonate and to gas shale reservoirs.
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- North America > United States > Texas > Travis Peak Formation (0.99)
- North America > United States > Texas > East Texas Salt Basin > Whelan Lease > Waskom Field > Lowe Paluxy Formation (0.99)
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Distinguished Author Series articles are general, descriptive representations that summarize the state of the art in an area of technology by describing recent developments for readers who are not specialists in the topics discussed. Written by individuals recognized as experts in the area, these articles provide key references to more definitive work and present specific details only to illustrate the technology. Purpose: to inform the general readership of recent advances in various areas of petroleum engineering. Introduction Tight gas is the term commonly used to refer to low-permeability reservoirs that produce mainly dry natural gas. Many of the low-permeability reservoirs developed in the past are sandstone, but significant quantities of gas also are produced from low-permeability carbonates, shales, and coal seams. In this paper, production of gas from tight sandstones is the predominant theme. However, much of the same technology applies to tight-carbonate and gas-shale reservoirs. In general, a vertical well drilled and completed in a tight gas reservoir must be successfully stimulated to produce at commercial gas-flow rates and produce commercial gas volumes. Normally, a large hydraulic-fracture treatment is required to produce gas economically. In some naturally fractured tight gas reservoirs, horizontal wells can be drilled, but these wells also need to be stimulated. To optimize development of a tight gas reservoir, a team of geoscientists and engineers must optimize the number and locations of wells to be drilled, as well as the drilling and completion procedures for each well. Often, more data and more engineering manpower are required to understand and develop tight gas reservoirs than are required for higher-permeability conventional reservoirs. On an individual-well basis, a well in a tight gas reservoir will produce less gas over a longer period of time than one expects from a well completed in a higher-permeability conventional reservoir. As such, many more wells (closer well spacing) must be drilled in a tight gas reservoir to recover a large percentage of the original gas in place compared with a conventional reservoir. Definition of Tight Gas Reservoir In the 1970s, the U.S. government decided that the definition of a tight gas reservoir is one in which the expected value of permeability to gas flow would be less than 0.1 md. This definition was a political definition that has been used to determine which wells would receive federal and/or state tax credits for producing gas from tight reservoirs. Actually, the definition of a tight gas reservoir is a function of many physical and economic factors. The physical factors are related by Darcy's law, as shown in the stabilized, radial-flow equation, Eq. 1, (Lee 1982).
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The first hydraulic fracturing treatment was pumped in 1947 on a gas well operated by Pan American Petroleum Corp. in the Hugoton field.[1] Kelpper Well No. 1, located in Grant County, Kansas, was a low-productivity well, even though it had been acidized. The well was chosen for the first hydraulic fracture stimulation treatment so that hydraulic fracturing could be compared directly with acidizing. Since that first treatment in 1947, hydraulic fracturing has become a common treatment for stimulating the productivity of oil and gas wells. Hydraulic fracturing is the process of pumping a fluid into a wellbore at an injection rate that is too great for the formation to accept in a radial flow pattern.
- Geology > Geological Subdiscipline > Geomechanics (1.00)
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- Reservoir Description and Dynamics > Unconventional and Complex Reservoirs > Naturally-fractured reservoirs (1.00)
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The most important data for designing a fracture treatment are the in-situ stress profile, formation permeability, fluid-loss characteristics, total fluid volume pumped,propping agent type and amount, pad volume, fracture-fluid viscosity, injection rate, and formation modulus. It is very important to quantify the in-situ stress profile and the permeability profile of the zone to be stimulated, plus the layers of rock above and below the target zone that will influence fracture height growth. There is a structured method that should be followed to design, optimize, execute, evaluate, and reoptimize the fracture treatments in any reservoir. The first step is always the construction of a complete and accurate data set.Table 1 lists the sources for the data required to run fracture propagation and reservoir models. The design engineer must be capable of analyzing logs, cores, production data, and well-test data and be capable of digging through well files to obtain all the information needed to design and evaluate the well that is to be hydraulically fracture treated.
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In addition to knowing the values of in-situ stress, it is also extremely important to know the values of formation permeability in every rock layer. It is impossible to optimize the location of the perforations, the length of the hydraulic fracture, the conductivity of the hydraulic fracture, and the well spacing, if one does not know the values of formation permeability in every rock layer. In addition, one must know the formation permeability to forecast gas reserves and to analyze post-fracture pressure buildup tests. To determine the values of formation permeability, one can use data from logs, cores, production tests, and prefracture pressure buildup tests or injection falloff tests. The most data that are available vs. depth comes from openhole logs.
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