A Two-Phase Flowback Type-Curve for Multiscale Fluid Transport in Hydraulically Fractured Shale Reservoirs

Abstract The quantitative understanding of HF properties guides accurate production forecasts and reserve estimation. Type curve is a powerful technique to characterize hydraulic fracture (HF) and reservoir properties from flowback and long-term production data. However, the two-phase flow of water and hydrocarbon after an HF stimulation together with the complex transport mechanisms in shale nanopores exacerbate the nonlinearity of the transport equation, causing errors in type-curve analysis. Accordingly, we propose a new two-phase type-curve method to estimate HF properties, such as HF volume and permeability of fracture, through the analysis of flowback data of multi-fractured shale wells. The proposed type curve is based on a semianalytical solution that couples the two-phase flow from the matrix with the flow in HF by incorporating matrix influx, slippage effect, stress dependence, and the spatial variation of fluid properties in inorganic and organic pores. For the first time, multiple fluid transport mechanisms are considered into two-phase type-curve analysis for shale reservoirs. We analyze the flowback data from a multi-fractured horizontal well in a shale gas reservoir to verify the field application of the proposed method. The results show that the fracture properties calculated by the type-curve method are in good agreement with the long-time production data.