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Production forecast of fractured vertical wells in coalbed methane reservoirs: coupling dynamic drainage area

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Abstract

Nowadays, a great deal of attention has been attracted to the development of unconventional gas reservoirs, expecting to act as an essential role in counterpoising daily increasing energy demand all over the world. In this article, with the intent of contributing to the successful development of coalbed methane (CBM) reservoirs, a robust production prediction model is proposed for fractured vertical CBM wells. The main difference, compared with previous excellent documents, is consideration of pressure propagation behavior on CBM production performance. In general, CBM reservoirs possess the low-permeability (< 1 mD) physical property, which results in the slow pressure propagation speed during entire production life. Furthermore, because of the unique gas desorption effect inside coal matrix, more and more adsorption gas will enter coal cleats with the production proceeds, accumulating formation energy and mitigating the pressure propagation speed. As a result, it is a relatively time-lengthy period for the pressure propagation process regarding CBM reservoirs, which has not been detailed and comprehensively analyzed currently. Notably, formation pressure is a key sensitive parameter, affecting production performance of CBM wells, stemmed from the fact that gas production takes place only when formation pressure is lower than critical desorption pressure. Thus, the pressure propagation behavior has a close relationship with production performance of CBM wells, which however fails to receive due attention. In light of current conditions, the article attempts to shed light on the effect of pressure propagation behavior on production performance of CBM wells, from both theoretical and application views. With the capacity of capturing the pressure propagation behavior, a robust production prediction model is proposed for fractured vertical CBM wells, its reliability has been well verified by numerical simulator. Also, pressure propagation behavior during production process can be predicted by the proposed model, which is supposed to be highlighted as the main novel point, comparing with previous contributions. The proposed model is able to yield sensible production performance with only several input parameters, and its calculation duration is less than that of a full-calibrated numerical simulator. Meanwhile, formation pressure variation feature can be presented by the proposed model, providing an alternative pathway to evaluate and optimize production performance of fractured vertical CBM wells.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks for the conference lecture (OTC 29877). This is an improvement, and the full copyright of presentation has been reverted to the original owner. We also acknowledge China University of Mining & Technology for the permission to publish this work.

Funding

The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation Projects of China (No. 52104099) and Natural Science Foundation Projects of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20210508). The first author also acknowledges the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (No. 2021QN1059) to support part of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Coal Resources and Safe Mining, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221116, China

    Zheng Sun, Bingxiang Huang & Yaohui Li

  2. China Petroleum Planning & Engineering Institute, Beijing, 100083, China

    Weichao Yu

  3. PetroChina Coalbed Methane Company Limited, Beijing, 100028, China

    Liang Ji

Authors
  1. Zheng Sun
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  2. Bingxiang Huang
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  3. Yaohui Li
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  4. Weichao Yu
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  5. Liang Ji
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zheng Sun or Bingxiang Huang.

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Responsible Editor: Santanu Banerjee

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Sun, Z., Huang, B., Li, Y. et al. Production forecast of fractured vertical wells in coalbed methane reservoirs: coupling dynamic drainage area. Arab J Geosci 15, 7 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-09094-9

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