Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering

Committee Chair

Ilkin Bilgesu.

Abstract

Unconventional gas reservoirs become one of the most important energy sources in United States and all over the world. The Appalachian basin has very organic rich shale formations; it contains Marcellus and Utica shale formations with billions of cubic feet of natural gas as reserve. The development in hydraulic fracturing technology with horizontal drilling for thousands of lateral feet increase the recoverable gas from the shale formations and challenges the researchers to understand the fracturing mechanism and to study the relation between operation parameters and formation properties with the fracturing treatment outcome.;The main objective of this thesis was to study the impact of formation geo-mechanical properties such as horizontal stress level, Young's modulus and Poison's ratio on the fracturing treatment outcome and also on the complex fracture growth. More precisely, the impact of these properties on the growth of discrete fracture network (DFN). A single horizontal well model was built using commercial software to simulate the fracturing treatment. This model built based on Utica shale properties obtained from different sources.;In this thesis, we investigated the impact of horizontal stress level, Young's modulus, Poison's ratio and the leak-off coefficient. The results showed that the horizontal stress level plays a significant role in controlling the fracture orientation and growth, also affects the stimulated reservoir volume (SRV). The Young's modulus and the Leak-off coefficient also impact the fracture and the discrete fracture network. It has been determined that the formations with high Young's modulus generated high SRV. The Poison's ratio had negligible impact on the fracturing treatment outcome.

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