Effect of a hydraulic fracture on the performance of a layered gas condensate reservoir

The long-term performance of a hydraulically fractured layered rich gas condensate reservoir was predicted utilizing an actual reservoir fluid and a compositional simulator. The physical system modeled in the work assumed that the fractured well was situated at the center of a layered reservoir consisting of a square drainage region. The predicted results show that hydraulic fracturing was effective in reducing, the effect of condensate blockage on productivity index (PI). It increased the PI up to 3.6 times, below the dew point pressure, after 10 years as compared to PI value of non-fractured well. This effect resulted in an increase of 60% cumulative gas production and 43% cumulative condensate production. In both the fractured and non-fractured cases, there was a sudden drop in PI because of condensate blockage right after the dew point pressure was reached. The hydraulic fracturing delayed the condensate saturation build up as compared to the non-fractured case because of delaying the onset of dew point pressure. For both the non-fractured and fractured cases, condensate started accumulating around the wellbore and the fracture, respectively, below the dew point pressure and decreased with respect to distance for a fixed time. Also, in general, condensate saturation increased with respect to time for a fixed distance through out the reservoir for all low and high permeability layers until it reached certain maximum value. At early times, condensate was found to build up to higher values in the high permeability layers. The increase in dimensionless fracture conductivity improved the long-term performance of gas condensate reservoir but the effect was pronounced for a longer fracture. The increase in fracture length improved the long-term performance of a gas condensate reservoir but the effect was much pronounced for a highly conductive fracture. The increase in initial maximum flow rate improved the long-term performance, up to a certain value of flow rate, above that the improvement was not significant. Formation cross-flow improved, appreciably, the production performance of a gas condensate reservoir.