Numerical Simulation of Pressure Dissipation Behavior on Migration Patterns in Hydraulically Fractured in Shale Formation

Horizontal well drilling and hydraulic fracturing were implemented to enhance the economic development of shale gas formations. Thus, the consideration of the gas flow patterns in the rock reservoir formation is essential to ensure that the gas production from these formations is improved properly. Typically, the reservoir boundaries are considered to be sufficiently sealed for developing models to maximize the gas production from shale formations that act as a non-flux boundary. Nonetheless, sealed faults and normal fractures in the shale reservoir could be reactivated during hydraulic fracture stimulation, which can lead to changes in boundary conditions. This scenario was conducted in this paper. The simulation was sized at the production stage for computational implementation. A new approach to model fractures in the formation using the semi-explicit method of horizontal layers and the well stimulation technique was introduced in this research. The relation between the impact of permeability change and boundary conditions were different in the domain. COMSOL Multiphysics 5.1 was used to solve the flow equation; moreover, the numerical simulation of pressure dissipation and gas flowing motion in the shale gas fractured was addressed. The research results reveal that in the existence of a fault across the structure boundaries, of the non-flux maximum was rendered to forecast the gas production rate values and neglect the leak-off values that can be correlated with some fault around the boundary.