The term ‘Unconventional Reservoirs’ is used in the oil and gas industry for hydrocarbon reservoirs that have very low permeability in the magnitude of microdarcy (μd) and therefore rely on artificially introducing pathways for fluids and gases, commonly by using hydraulic fracturing techniques, to enable economic production. This approach of using fracturing stimulation campaigns is also incre...

The clear understanding of hydraulic fracture network complexity and the optimization of fracture network configuration are important to the hydraulic fracturing treatment of shale gas reservoirs. For the prediction of hydraulic fracture network configuration, one of the problems is the accurate representation of natural fractures. In this work, a real natural fracture network is reconstructed ...

The hydraulic fracturing propagation is strongly influenced by the existence of natural fractures. This is a very important factor in hydraulic fracturing operations in unconventional reservoirs. Various studies have been done to consider the effect of different parameters such as stress anisotropy, toughness, angle of approach and fluid properties on interaction mechanisms including crossing, ...

Analyses of fracturing and thermal performance of fractured reservoirs in engineered geothermal system (EGS) are extended from a depth of 5 km to 10 km, and models for flow and heat transfer in EGS are improved. Effects of the geofluid flow direction choice, distance between fractures, fracture width, permeability, radius, and number of fractures, on reservoir heat drawdown time are computed. T...

Biogenic sulfide production is a common problem in the oil industry, and can lead to costly hydrocarbon processing and corrosion of extraction infrastructure. The same phenomenon has recently been identified in shale gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing, and organic additives in fracturing fluid have been hypothesized to stimulate this process. Constraining the relative effects of the numerou...

Hydraulic fracturing is a technology used to extract natural gas from shale rock formations found deep beneath the earth. It raises many public health and environmental issues of concern to municipalities and planners, both urban and rural. These issues range from potential water contamination and air pollution to noise, dust, truck traffic, and even minor earthquakes. This article identifies r...

Many natural examples of complex joint and vein networks in layered sedimentary rocks are hydro-fractures that form by a combination of pore fluid overpressure and tectonic stresses. In this paper, a two-dimensional hybrid hydro-mechanical formulation is proposed to model the dynamic development of natural hydrofractures. The numerical scheme combines a Discrete Element Model (DEM) framework th...