Geomechanical and Hydrogeological Evaluation of a Shallow Hydraulic Fracture at the Devine Fracture Pilot Site, Medina County, Texas

• Published in: Rock mechanics and rock engineering 2023-10, Vol.56 (10), p.7049-7069
• Main Authors: Haddad, Mahdi, Ahmadian, Mohsen, Ge, Jun, Nicot, J.-P., Ambrose, William
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Civil Engineering; Data acquisition; Diagnostic systems; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Exhibitions; Finite element method; Flow rates; Fracture mechanics; Fracture permeability; Geology; Geomechanics; Geophysical exploration; Geophysical methods; Geophysics/Geodesy; History; Hydraulic fracturing; Hydraulics; Hydrogeology; Injection; Matching; Original Paper; Permeability; Poroelasticity; Pressure; Scale formation; Scaling; Transient analysis; Woodlands
• ISSN: 0723-2632; 1434-453X
• DOI: 10.1007/s00603-022-03115-z

UT-Austin’s Devine Fracture Pilot Site, 50 miles southwest of San Antonio, Texas, has been targeted for a comprehensive, multidisciplinary development of fracture diagnostic techniques that are cross-validated by ground-truth data acquisition near a recently created, 175-ft-deep, horizontal hydraulic fracture (Ahmadian et al. 2018 Demonstration of proof of concept of electromagnetic geophysical methods for high resolution illumination of induced fracture networks. In Proceedings of the SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition, The Woodlands, Texas, USA, 23–25 January 2018. SPE-189858-MS.). To evaluate the fracture diagnostic methods at this site, we conducted injection tests with a predefined volumetric flow-rate profile, resembling a diagnostic fracture injection test on September 2020. Subsequently, we developed hydrogeological and geomechanical models based on flow-rate and bottomhole-pressure measurements. History-matching efforts using a simplified layer-cake hydrogeological model resulted in the field-scale formation permeability of 9.87 × 10 –15  m 2 (10 mD) and Darcy-scale fracture permeability. The analysis of the bottomhole pressure and injection-rate history showed that (1) the newly created horizontal fracture was closed adjacent to the injection well pre-injection and (2) the initial pump-pressure increase at a nominal volumetric injection rate led to near-well fracture reopening, fluid conductivity increase, and abrupt injection-rate increase. To overcome hydrogeological-model limitations of predicting fracture reopening throughout injection, we extended the modeling to a finite-element, poroelastic analysis of horizontal-fracture growth using a cohesive-zone model. Using this fracture-reopening model, we improved the history match of the transient-pressure response during the experiment by adjusting the hydromechanical properties. Post-injection pressure transient analyses helped reduce uncertainty in the overburden-stress gradient, and the initial hydraulic-fracturing simulation verified the plausibility of achieving the surveyed propped fracture area. Highlights We proposed a procedure for developing a hydrogeological model to improve the history matching of the bottomhole pressure during a hydraulic-fracture reopening. We compared the outcomes of this hydrogeological model with a calibrated poroelastic model, showing the advantage of the later model for fracture reopening and re-closure. We suggest using a spatiotempo