- The Role of Natural Fractures in Shale Gas Production
- I. Walton ; J. McLennan
- Book Title / Journal: Effective and Sustainable Hydraulic Fracturing - Chpater 16
- Year: 2013
- Mining ; Other Geotechnical
- Keywords: natural fractures ; shale gas production
- Description
- In this paper we investigate the role played by natural fractures in the gas production process. By applying a new model of the production process to data from many shale gas wells across a number of shale plays in North America, we can for the first time begin to sort out assertion from inference in the role that these fractures play. Specifically, we are able to estimate the magnitude of the fracture surface through which gas is actually produced. We are
able to demonstrate that although it may be commensurate with the expected surface area of
open natural fractures for the ultra-low permeability shallow gas shales, it is in fact com‐
mensurate with a very much smaller area for the deeper gas shales such as the Barnett. Furthermore, given a typical value of the matrix permeability, almost all the gas between the
fractures would have been produced in an uncharacteristically short period of time unless
the producing fractures are 100s of feet apart. The implications of these findings for completion and stimulation strategies will be discussed.
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