Hydraulic fracture model comparison study: Complete results

Large quantities of natural gas exist in low permeability reservoirs throughout the US. Characteristics of these reservoirs, however, make production difficult and often economic and stimulation is required. Because of the diversity of application, hydraulic fracture design models must be able to account for widely varying rock properties, reservoir properties, in situ stresses, fracturing fluids, and proppant loads. As a result, fracture simulation has emerged as a highly complex endeavor that must be able to describe many different physical processes. The objective of this study was to develop a comparative study of hydraulic-fracture simulators in order to provide stimulation engineers with the necessary information to make rational decisions on the type of models most suited for their needs. This report compares the fracture modeling results of twelve different simulators, some of them run in different modes for eight separate design cases. Comparisons of length, width, height, net pressure, maximum width at the wellbore, average width at the wellbore, and average width in the fracture have been made, both for the final geometry and as a function of time. For the models in this study, differences in fracture length, height and width are often greater than a factor of two. In addition, several comparisons of the same model with different options show a large variability in model output depending upon the options chosen. Two comparisons were made of the same model run by different companies; in both cases the agreement was good. 41 refs., 54 figs., 83 tabs.