Horizontal well technology has been widely used in developing gas fields. Very commonly, these wells are hydraulically fractured to improve productivity in low permeability reservoirs. A previously developed method, the Distributed Volumetric Source method (DVS), was applied to horizontal gas wells with or without fractures to predict well performance. The method is flexible and can be easily applied. The method provides an effective tool to evaluate horizontal well design and well stimulation design for gas wells. In this paper, we conducted a well performance study by applying the DVS method to typical gas formations in East Texas Basin, San Juan Basin, and Appalachian Basin. Basin.. The objective is to determine the best practice to produce from horizontal gas wells. With the transient flow feature of the DVS method, well placement for multiple horizontal wells in a defined drainage area can be studied, and the limit of well spacing and wellbore length is identified. For fractured wells, well performance of a single fracture and multiple fractures are compared, and the effect of the number of fractures on productivity of the well is presented. Realizing that reservoir permeability and anisotropy ratio are the critical parameters in developing low-permeability gas fields, the effect of permeability on well performance, well placement and fracture treatment design is addressed in the paper. .
展开▼
