SPE-172083-MS

Enhanced Gas Recovery by CO2 Sequestration versus Re-fracturing

Treatment in Unconventional Shale Gas Reservoirs
Mohammad O. Eshkalak, Emad W. Al-Shalabi, Alireza Sanaei, and Umut Aybar, SPE; Kamy Sepehrnoori, The
University of Texas at Austin

Copyright 2014, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, 10 13 November 2014.
This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
It is proposed that very low permeability formations are possible candidates for CO2 sequestration.
Further, experimental studies have shown that shale formations have huge affinity to adsorb CO2, the
order of 5 to 1 compared to the methane. Therefore, potential sequestration of CO2 in shale formations
leading to enhanced gas recovery (EGR) will be a promising while challenging target for the oil and gas
industry. On the other side, hydraulic re-fracturing treatment of shale gas wells is currently gaining more
attention due to the poor performance of shale gas reservoirs after a couple years of production. Hence,
investigating and comparing the performance of CO2-EGR with the re-fracturing treatment is essential for
the future economic viability of depleted shale gas reservoirs. This paper presents a systematic comparison
of the effect of these two processes on improving gas production performance of unconventional
reservoirs, which is not well understood and has not been studied thoroughly in the literature.
In this paper, a shale gas field data has been evaluated and incorporated in our simulations for both
CO2-EGR and re-fracturing treatment purposes. Numerical simulations are performed using local grid
refinement (LGR) in order to accurately model the non-linear pressure drop. Also, a dual-porosity/dualpermeability model is incorporated in the reservoir simulation model. Further, the uncertainties associated
with inter-related set of geologic and engineering parameters are evaluated and quantified for re-fracturing
treatment through several simulation runs. This comprehensive sensitivity study helps in understanding
the key reservoir and fracture properties that affect the production performance and enhanced gas recovery
in shale gas reservoirs.
The results showed that re-fracturing treatment outperforms CO2-EGR due to the pronounced effect on
cumulative methane gas production. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis showed that the characteristics of
reservoir matrix including permeability and porosity are the most influential parameters for re-fracturing
treatment. The findings of this study recommend hydraulic re-fracturing of shale reservoirs at first for
enhancing gas production followed by CO2 injection at a later time. This work provides field operators
with more insight into maximizing gas recovery from unconventional shale gas reservoirs using refracturing stimulation, CO2 injection, or a combination of both methods.

SPE-172083-MS

Introduction
Unconventional shale reservoirs are the fastest-growing natural gas resources that secure the United States
energy supply for decades to come. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has estimated 800
trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas stored in shale unconventional resources. As a result,
development plans for natural gas production has increased since that time. Economically unfeasible
production of natural gas from these tight formations resulted in recent advancements in hydraulic
fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies. Considerable number of multi-stage hydraulic fracturing
of shale gas wells enabled industry to unlock shale formations and achieve economic production.
Nevertheless, very rapid decline in gas production from these shale reservoirs necessitates either drilling
new wells or considering enhanced gas recovery methods to boost gas production and achieve stable
economic trend. In this paper, two different EGR methods are investigated and systematically compared
in terms of their efficiency in enhancing gas production. The first method is re-fracturing treatment in
order to revive a shale gas well, which has failed to achieve economic gas production rates. The second
proposed method is CO2 injection by means of storage and sequestration as well as enhancing gas
recovery.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas which is emitted through human activities. The
United states Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that CO2 accounted for 82% of all the
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2012. Considerable concerns about global climate change are raised
within last decade that are mainly related to the increased rate of CO2 emission to the environment as a
result of fossil fuels combustion. Carbon Management technologies include CO2 injection by means of
enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR), CO2 injection into saline aquifers, CO2-Enhanced coal bed methane
recovery (CO2-ECBM), and others. These technologies do not only serve to minimize the CO2 released
to atmosphere, but also to create revenue through production enhancement. Multi-fractured, continuous,
organic-rich, and extremely low permeability black shale rock is a favorable option for sequestering CO2
which is studied in this paper.
Natural gas is slowly released from the very low permeability shale rock surface that results in a
continued steady-state long term production, but the production rates are very low. Relatively, thick and
organic rich shale rocks with vast amount of natural gas has made this resource a very viable and
promising target that secures energy for decades. A key component of production from shale is the
availability of wide fracture networks in the stimulated reservoir volume (SRV). The most prolific shale
assets possess large amount of natural fractures. These complex networks of fractures expose gas as much
as possible to the wellbore. Additionally, advances in seismic technology helps in characterizing the
pre-existing natural fracture networks in shale gas reservoirs. However, this information is not available
because of the economic considerations. Further, there are two commonly used approaches to describe
fluid flow in fractured systems; dual-porosity/dual-permeability and discrete fracture model (DFM).
Moreover, gas flow in this very low-permeability, dense structured, and both naturally and hydraulically fractured shale rock has a complex behavior that resulted from many co-existing phenomena. These
phenomena are non-Darcy flow, gas desorption, Klinkenberg slippage effect, and fractures conductivity
losses. This fact has made the development of models and simulators for unconventional assets a very hard
task. Many studies have been conducted which resulted in developments of unconventional reservoir
models in both analytical and numerical fashion. Commercial reservoir simulators have also improved to
handle and capture fluid flow behavior and natural gas production from unconventional assets such as
shale. Among analytical and semi-analytical methods, works performed by Patzek et al. (2014), Moghanloo and Javadpour (2014), and Aybar et al. (2014) which have achieved a remarkable progress in modeling
of shale gas reservoirs. Moreover, Several simulation studies have been performed through developing
in-house simulators or using commercial simulators (Cipolla et al., 2010; Moinfar et al., 2013; Wei et al.,
2014; Eshkalak et al., 2013 and 2014; Sanaei et al., 2014) which helped in evaluating and studying the

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impacts of various parameters affecting simulation and modeling of unconventional shale reservoirs.
Nevertheless, modeling and simulation of the re-fracturing treatment and CO2-EGR process of shale gas
has not been discussed thoroughly yet.
In this paper, a synthetic shale gas reservoir model is created using the CMG commercial reservoir
simulator. Local grid refinement (LGR) is used in the simulation runs to improve the simulation accuracy
for regions around hydraulic fractures. Also, a dual-porosity/dual-permeability model is incorporated in
the reservoir simulation model. Two horizontal multi-fractured wells are examined in this study; Fractures
and matrix of shale formation is assumed to be fully saturated with natural gas and there is no indication
of water production. Sensitivity analysis is used to determine the effect of varying geologic, engineering,
and operating parameters on the model results.

Statement of Theory and Definitions

1. Re-fracturing Treatment of Shale Gas Wells
When production rates drop below economic limits, significant amounts of producible reserves remain in
the existing stimulated reservoir volume. In general, production decline from shale gas wells is more rapid
compared to wells in conventional reservoirs because of the ultra-low permeability of the rock. As a result,
re-fracturing is often considered as the best option for increasing production from unconventional gas
reservoirs to an economic level. Nevertheless, the re-fracturing treatment of shale wells is still a new
practice upon which the applicability of the technology has not yet been proven and the conditions under
which it may be successful are not clearly understood for long-term profitability of shale reservoirs.
Jayakumar et al. (2013) reported two reasons for re-fracturing shale fields. First, the original fracturing
network has no significant contribution to the flow to the wellbore. Second, the initial completion
performance has degraded over time below operational or economic limits. Therefore, re-fracturing is a
necessary step to attain economically viable production rates in depleted shale formations.
There are some studies in the literature that highlighted different aspects of re-fracturing treatments.
Siebrits et al. (2000) reported an enhancement in natural gas production by the re-fracturing treatment in
Barnett shale. Regarding selection of candidate wells and time of re-fracturing treatment, several
researchers discussed and developed criterion-based approaches (Blasingame and Craig, 2005; Rousell
and Sharma, 2011; Moore, 2006; Hill et al., 2013; Tavassoli et al., 2013). Moreover, it has been stated that
the success of a re-fracturing treatment depends on the depleted reservoir pressure and hydraulic fractures
geometry (Vincent, 2010; Shekar et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2013). Eshkalak et al. (2014) evaluated the
economic feasibility of the re-fracturing treatment of the U.S. Shale gas resources and stressed on the
importance of selecting proper candidate wells which not only recoups the overall economic recovery of
shale wells, but also makes profit. They also concluded that consideration should be given from the
beginning to determine the best way to accomplish a re-fracturing treatment when the primary production
declines to a predetermined point. Re-fracturing treatment is considered more beneficial because for two
reasons; 1) it can be an alternative to drilling a new well which potentially can saves around 1 to 4 million
dollars (Alison e al., 2014); and 2) the environmental impact of reusing a wellbore is dramatically less than
drilling and completing a new well in a different location.
Three of the main challenges in re-fracturing treatment of shale gas wells are selection of candidate
wells, determination of optimal re-fracturing time, and placement of re-fractures. A robust procedure
introduced by Tavassoli et al. (2013) is employed in this study which all the wells are considered to be
good candidates satisfying their criterion. Further, the re-fracturing treatment is applied after 5 years of
production as an optimal re-fracturing time. Also, Tavassoli et al. (2013) observed that natural gas
production is maximized by placing the hydraulic re-fractures in the middle of each pair of primary
hydraulic fractures. Fig. 1 shows the effect of re-fracturing placement between each pair of the primary
hydraulic fractures.

SPE-172083-MS

2. CO2-Enhanced Gas Recovery and Storage

There are several reasons for considering depleted
shale gas reservoirs as a viable option for CO2
storage and natural gas production enhancement.
Integrity of shale gas reservoirs is the first reason
upon which they prevent potential leak out of CO2
after being stored in subsurface. The original natural
gas being stored in these formations on the long
geological time scale is a clear evidence of this
integrity. Second, the gravity segregation and higher
Figure 1The effect of re-fracturing placement on well production
sorption affinity of shale rock to CO2 compared
with CH4 guarantees an efficient displacement of
remaining CH4 by CO2 molecules. Third, the costs of CO2 injection is not a concern since utilizing the
available depleted gas wells achieves the economic feasibility and makes a profit. Fourth, the concern
related to the increased rate of daily greenhouse gases will result in extended use of this technology for
the oil and gas industry in the near future.
Enhanced gas recovery (EGR) of shale gas reservoirs using CO2 is still in its very preliminary stage
and the applicability of this method sounds to be promising in the near future for oil and gas industry.
CO2-EGR is a simultaneous production of natural gas by injecting CO2 while at the same time
sequestering the CO2 since it is strongly absorbable compared with CH4. Further, clay content of
unconventional gas reservoirs exhibit gas storage capacity and serves as gas sorption sites (Sondergeld,
2010). A feasibility study of CO2-EGR and sequestration was reported by Kalantari-Dahaghi (2010). He
concluded that the process is feasible since CO2 molecules have greater sorption affinity compared to
methane molecules. Moreover, several simulation studies were performed by Schepers et al. (2009) which
investigated the applicability of CO2-EGR process and also analyzed the impact of CO2 injection on
ultimate gas recovery. Wei et al. (2014) analyzed CO2 Huff-n-Puff scenario in their simulation study and
did not recommend this scenario for production enhancement due to the fast CO2 re-production at the
surface facility line.
Jiang et al. (2014) developed a multi-continuum simulator that simultaneously incorporates the effects
of Knudsen diffusion, gas-slippage, and multi-component sorption behavior for CO2-EGR process in
fractured shale gas reservoirs. They incorporated the research conducted by Moinfar et al. (2013) and
implemented a novel method in their in-house simulator that integrates Embedded Discrete Fractures
Model (EDFM), dual-continuum, and Multiple Interacting Continua concept (MINC) in order to model
the complex nature of hydraulic fractures network. Their numerical model was designed and applied using
a generic abstraction that was built on top of the Automatically Differentiable Expression Templates
Library (ADETL) (Younis, 2011). Their numerical approach successfully and efficiently has modeled
different aspects of simulation of shale gas reservoirs considering CO2-EGR process using state-of-the-art
of numerical methods.
2.1 CO2 flooding In order to compare re-fracturing treatment with CO2-EGR, a CO2 flooding scenario
is designed. In this scenario, two wells are drilled horizontally in the middle of the reservoir and
considered for a period of 30 years of operation. Initially, the two wells are producing natural gas for 5
years. Then, one of the wells is converted into CO2 injector while methane gas is continuously produced
from the other producer. The producer well is set to a constant bottom-hole pressure (BHP) constraint of
1000 psi while a constant injection rate of 0.1 MMSCF/day is used for the injector.
2.2 CO2 Huff-n-Puff The application of cyclic CO2 injection is often referred to as CO2 Huff-N-Puff
process or cyclic gas recovery. This scenario is evaluated as well to demonstrate its performance as an
EGR process. The three main stages of CO2 Huff-N-Puff process are summarized as follows:

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Figure 2Schematic of the CO2 huff-n-puff process in a multi-fractured horizontal shale gas well

1. First, a horizontal well is converted to a CO2

injector for a certain period of time.
2. Second, the well is shut-in to give a time
period for soaking of the CO2 gas.
3. Third, the well is put back to production.
These three main time intervals should be considered in a CO2 huff-n-puff process. A schematic
of CO2 huff-n-puff process in one horizontal well is
shown in Fig. 2.

Governing Equations
Generally, two-phase fluid flow of water and gas in
a dual-permeability model is considered in constructing the geologic model of shale gas reservoirs.
The dual-permeability model considers the intercommunication between the inter-granular void
spaces in contrast to the dual-porosity model. Also,
this model considers flow in two domains including
the matrix and fractures. This model allows the
transfer of both gas and water between the matrix
and fracture domains gas velocity in the matrix and
fracture domain is calculated with the Eqs. 1 and 2:
(1)

Table 1Values used in BET and Langmuir isotherm models

Parameter

Value

Unit

510
47
927
45
10
9.7

psi
scf/ton
psi
scf/ton
unit-less
unit-less

PL
VL
Po
Vm
C
N

Table 2Properties of synthetic shale reservoir model

Parameter

Value

Model Dimensions
Depth
Pore Pressure Gradient
Fracture Spacing
Fracture Half Length
Fracture Height
Fracture Conductivity
Reservoir Temperature
Matrix Permeability
Matrix Porosity
Number of Fractures
Initial Pressure
Bottom-Hole Pressure (BHP)
Gas Viscosity
Simulation Run Time

2100*1700*100
9000
0.55
500
250
100
4
180
100
0.05
4
5000
1000
0.018
30

Unit
ft
ft
psi/ft
ft
ft
ft
mD-ft
F
nD
fraction
number
psi
psi
cP
years

(2)
where vg is gas velocity, Kg is gas permeability, Dg is gas diffusivity, Pg is gas pressure, Cg is gas
concentration, and g is gas viscosity. Subscripts m and f represent matrix and fracture domain. Velocity
of the water flowing in matrix and fracture are determined with Eqs. 3 and 4, respectively:
(3)
(4)
where, vw is water velocity, Kw is water permeability, Pw is water pressure, and w is water viscosity.

SPE-172083-MS

Figure 3Configuration of wells, UT-1, UT-2 and hydraulic fractures

1. Flow in Matrix
The equations of gas transport thus are simplified for matrix domain as shown in Eq. 5:
(5)
where Z is the gas compressibility factor, R is the gas constant, T is Temperature, M is gas molecular
weight, and qg is gas mass flow rate per unit matrix-block volume. Subscript mf represents the exchange
between matrix and fracture. For the water phase, the same equation is shown in Eq. 6:
(6)
where Am is matrix porosity, sw is water saturation, and Bw is water compressibility factor.
2. Flow in Fracture
After some manipulation and simplifications, the gas flow governing equation in fracture becomes as the
following, Eq. 7:
(7)
For the water phase, Eq. 8 represents the related formula.
(8)
Eqs. 9 to 12 represents the auxiliary relations used in the solution method.
(9)
(10)
(11)
(12)
3. Multi-layer adsorption and desorption of CH4 and CO2
Organic matter of shale formation has shown strong adsorption potential of carbon dioxide (CO2)
compared to methane (CH4) according to experimental studies. There are few models describing the
desorption of methane gas in shale formations. Brunauer et al. (1938) introduced a multi-layer sorption
model (BET) for gasses on solids which is a generalized form of Langmuir model (1918). Langmuir
isotherm is commonly used in the literature in shale gas modeling and simulation considering an analogy

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Figure 4 Top view of a single hydraulic fracture and the local grid refinement around it, permeability (mD)

between coal and shale. In this study, the BET model is used for CO2 and the Langmuir model for CH4.
The BET multiple-adsorbed-layer model is given by:
(13)
where V(p) is the gas volume of adsorption at pressure P, Vm is the maximum adsorption gas volume
when the entire adsorbent surface being covered with a complete uni-molecular layer, Po is the saturation
pressure of the gas, and C is a constant related to the heat of adsorption. Sing (1985) have classified six
different models for adsorption that is accepted by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
(IUPAC). The Langmuir isotherm model is explained by Eq. 14 as follows:
(14)
where G is the potential releasable-gas content in scf/ton, P is pore pressure (assumed as the average
reservoir pressure) in psi, and both VL (Langmuir volume) in scf/ton and PL (Langmuir pressure) in psi
are Langmuir constants. Laboratory tests are necessary to determine VL and PL from core samples.
Langmuir pressure is defined as the pressure at which 50% of gas is desorbed. By this definition, it is clear
that the higher the Langmuir pressure reaches, the higher the released-gas from the organic matter.
Langmuir volume is the gas volume at infinite pressure representing the maximum storage capacity of gas,
which is a function of total organic content (TOC) of shale sample. Parameters used in BET and Langmuir
models are presented in Table 1 modified from Wei et al. (2014).

Basic Reservoir Model with Multi-Fractured Gas Wells

Numerical simulation technique is a technology which enables characterization, development, and
management of a producing reservoir. It integrates geologic, geochemical, and petro-physical properties
and examines their effects on production. The ability to use simulation to investigate the sensitivity of
production to various reservoir properties is critical for the decision making process in unconventional
shale formations. Table 2 provides the data used to build the synthetic shale reservoir model.
Fig. 3 shows the configuration of the wells, UT-1 and UT-2 in the shale reservoir model. Fig. 3-a
depicts the initial (primary) hydraulic fractures that are created at the beginning of production. In Fig. 3.b,
the new added fractures after re-fracturing are demonstrated in red. As seen in Fig. 3-b, in order to

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Figure 5Huff-n-puff scenario with and without CO2 injection

Figure 6 Reservoir pressure for wells UT-1 and UT- 2

maximize methane gas production by re-fracturing treatment, the new fractures are placed in the middle
of each primary fractures. Moreover, Fig. 4 demonstrates a single hydraulic fracture and the local grid
refinement considered around it from a top view of the synthetic shale reservoir. In the previous figure,
the color bar represents the permeability values used for both the matrix and fracture domains.

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Figure 7Cumulative gas production for 4 scenarios

Results and Discussions

Table 3Results of performance indicators.

1. CO2 Huff-N-Puff Scenario

Performance Indicators
In this scenario, after 5 years of production from
Years of production
LRP
LCEP
both wells, one of the producers is converted into
30 years
0.61
0.008
CO2 injectors for 5 years. Also, another 5 years is
100 years
0.69
0.11
given as a soaking time. Afterwards, wells are put
back to production. Methane recovery for this scenario is almost less than 4 percent (Fig. 5). Based on
the observed mass fraction of production after soaking time in 15th year, it is observed that 96 percent of
CO2 is produced back with only 4 percent CH4 is produced at the well. This finding shows that the
huff-n-puff process is not a viable option for CO2-EGR since it delays 5 years of profitable gas production.
Hence, this scenario was excluded as an option for CO2-EGR and for the rest of the study we compare
CO2 flooding with re-fracturing treatment.
2. Comparison of Re-fracturing and CO2-EGR Treatments
First, we compare both re-fracturing and CO2-EGR treatments from an average pressure point of view.
Fig. 6 shows the average reservoir pressure for three different scenarios; base case without treatment,
re-fracturing, and CO2-EGR treatments. Figs. 6-a and 6-b demonstrate the pressure drop due to natural gas
production without treatment after 5 and 20 years of production. It should be noted that Fig. 6-a represents
the average pressure for the scenarios because both wells were producing at this time. For the base case,
after 5 years of production, well UT-2 is closed and the pressure distribution is shown in Fig. 6-b. It is
clearly shown that the pressure drop wave has almost hit the boundary of the SRV of well UT-2. Fig. 5-c
demonstrates more pressure drop in the SRV around UT-1 due to the additional hydraulic fractures in this
case of re-fracturing compared to the base case (Fig. 6-b). Fig. 6-d shows the average pressure for the
CO2-EGR scenario upon which there is an increase in pressure around the injector (UT-2) accompanied
by a dramatic decrease in pressure around the producer well (UT-1) due to gas injection.
In analyzing cumulative gas production, we have considered an additional scenario that is CO2
injection without adsorption. Fig. 7 depicts the effect of these four scenarios on the cumulative methane
production for 30 years; base case without treatment, re-fracturing treatment, and CO2-EGR treatment
with and without adsorption. The figure shows that enhancement of methane gas production from the
re-fracturing treatment is almost 20 times more than the CO2-EGR scenario. Clearly, the re-fracturing

10

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Table 4 Sensitivity of uncertain parameters

Parameter

Minimum

Average

Maximum

Unit

Matrix Permeability
Matrix Porosity
Fracture Spacing
Fracture Half-length
Fracture Conductivity
BET Isotherm
Po
Vm
C
N
Langmuir Isotherm
PL
VL

50
3
300
200
2
(1)
750
30
5
5
(1)
400
30

100
5
400
250
4
(2)
950
45
10
10
(2)
500
45

250
8
500
300
8
(3)
1150
55
15
15
(3)
600
60

nD
Percent
ft
ft
mD-ft
psi
scf/ton
unit-less
unit-less
psi
scf/ton

Figure 8 Sensitivity of the re-fracturing to the matrix permeability

treatment is providing high conductivity regions for the gas to be produced on the surface. The effect of
adsorption isotherm is also considered for CO2 injection scenarios. Cumulative production is slightly
higher in case of implementing adsorption isotherm. The effect of CO2-EGR on methane gas production
was investigated further by running the scenario for 100 years upon which a 10 percent increase in
methane production was observed as discussed in the next section.
3. Performance Indicators
In order to determine the production enhancement resulted from re-fracturing and CO2-EGR processes,
two different indicators are introduced. Long-term re-fracturing performance (LRP) which is defined as
the ratio of the difference in cumulative natural gas production with and without the re-fracturing
treatment to cumulative gas production without treatment. Long-term CO2-EGR performance (LCEP)
which is defined as the ratio of the difference in cumulative natural gas production with and without the
CO2-EGR treatment to cumulative gas production without treatment. Eqs. 15 and 16 represent these two
performance indicators.

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11

Figure 9 Sensitivity of the re-fracturing to the matrix porosity

Figure 10 Sensitivity of the re-fracturing to the fracture conductivity

(15)
(16)
These indicators are used for comparison purposes between the two proposed processes. If LRP is
greater than LCEP, then this indicates a better enhancement of gas production by re-fracturing compare
to CO2-EGR and vice versa for the case when LCEP is greater than LRP.
Table 3 demonstrates LRP and LCEP calculated for re-fracturing and CO2-EGR treatments at both 30
and 100 years of production. The results support the previous findings of re-fracturing treatment being
better than CO2-EGR. The difference is pronounced after 30 years of production upon which re-fracturing
treatment results in 61% TOC. Moreover, after 100 years of production, re-fracturing treatments does not
contribute much; however, we can see a pronounced response for CO2-EGR which is about 11% TOC.

12

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Figure 11Sensitivity of the re-fracturing to the fracture half-length

Figure 12Sensitivity of the re-fracturing to the fracture spacing

Hence, we recommend using re-fracturing treatment at first for enhancing gas production followed by
CO2 injection at a later time.
4. Sensitivity Analysis for Re-fracturing Treatment
As a result of the previous analysis, we decided to consider only re-fracturing treatment scenario for the
sensitivity analysis study. A comprehensive sensitivity study was performed on 7 selected design
parameters including geologic and engineering parameters. The uncertain parameters are reservoir matrix
permeability and porosity, fracture geometry including spacing, half-length, and conductivity, and BET
and Langmuir isotherms while the other parameters are kept constant. Table 4 shows the ranges used in
the sensitivity analysis. Special attention was given for selecting the minimum, average, and maximum
limits of the ranges of sensitivity analysis in order to be consistent with the current literature of shale
properties.

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13

Figure 13Sensitivity of the re-fracturing to different adsorption isotherms

Fig. 8 showss the effect of matrix permeability on cumulative gas production for the re-fracturing
treatment. The figure clearly depicts the pronounced effect of matrix permeability on enhancing methane
gas production using re-fracturing treatment. Moreover, the previous figure shows that cumulative
methane gas production increases as the matrix permeability increases.
The effect of matrix porosity on cumulative gas production is presented in Fig. 9. The figure shows a
positive effect of matrix porosity on methane gas production especially for late time of production. This
is due to the higher gas storativity in high porosity matrix compared to the low porosity matrix, which
results in a lower depletion in reservoir pressure and hence higher cumulative gas production.
Fig. 10 demonstrates the influence of fracture conductivity on cumulative gas production for the
re-fracturing treatment. The analysis shows a negligible effect of fracture conductivity on methane gas
production. The reason is associated with the fact that a minimal conductivity of 2 mD satisfies the gas
production and increasing conductivity doesnt result in a considerable increase in production.
The effect of fracture half-length on cumulative gas production is demonstrated in Fig. 11. There is a
pronounced positive effect of fracture half-length on methane production due to the increase in the SRV
which results in more free gas production and hence higher ultimate recovery.
Fig. 12 depicts a pronounced negative effect of fracturing spacing on cumulative gas production
including both primary and new created fractures. The figure shows that cumulative gas production
increases with decreasing the fracture spacing. The results are expected because with decreasing the
fracture spacing, we increase the number of fractures which provides easier flow paths for the gas
molecules towards the wellbore.
The effect of BET and Langmuir isotherms on cumulative gas production were studied as well and
presented in Fig. 13. Six different cases were generated for both Langmuir and BET isotherms as was
previously shown in Table 4. The results show that BET and Langmuir models have a significant effect
on methane gas production. This might be due to the relatively high pressure inside the matrix. Usually,
as the reservoir matrix pressure drops more, more gas desorbs from the surface, and become into a free
state which results in a pronounced gas production effect especially in late production times.
Based on the previous findings, the seven tested design parameters were ranked based on their
contribution in percentage to cumulative methane gas producing using re-fracturing treatment (Fig. 14).
It can be seen that the most two influential parameters are reservoir matrix permeability and porosity with

14

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Figure 14 Sensitivity analysis of re-fracturing treatment on cumulative gas production

65 % and 49% contribution to cumulative gas production, respectively. Fracture half-length, fracture
spacing, and fracture conductivity are the third, the fourth, and the fifth significant parameters, respectively. Moreover, Fig. 14 shows that both BET and Langmuir isotherms are insignificant parameters to
cumulative gas production by re-fracturing treatment.

Summary and Conclusions

In this work, we used numerical simulation techniques in order to compare re-fracturing treatment with
CO2-EGR process in shale horizontal gas wells. Different scenarios considering two isotherm models,
BET multi-layer and Langmuir, were constructed in the simulation models. In order to determine the
production enhancement resulted from the re-fracturing and CO2-EGR treatment, two different performance indicators were introduced. The main findings of this work can be summarized as follows:
1. Re-fracturing treatment of shale horizontal wells is more efficient in enhancing gas production
compared with CO2-EGR. The reason is related to the effective drainage area created by
re-fracturing treatment in shale gas reservoirs which results in more methane desorption from shale
rock. On the other hand, simulations showed that the effect of CO2-EGR process is mainly
pronounced in the form of re-pressurization the shale formation.
2. As a result of sensitivity analysis, reservoir matrix permeability and porosity are the most two
significant design parameters followed by fracture half-length, spacing, and conductivity in the
third, fourth, and fifth ranks, respectively.
3. The scenarios simulated in this work showed that there is a negligible effect of both adsorption
models (BET multi-layer or Langmuir isotherms) on enhancing gas recovery
4. A combination of both re-fracturing and CO2-EGR treatments is recommended upon which
re-fracturing is used at and then followed by CO2 flooding at a later time.
In our future work, we will investigate the feasibility of CO2 sequestration in shale gas reservoirs and
especially through the huff-n-puff technique, which did not have a pronounced effect on enhancing gas
recovery.

SPE-172083-MS

15

Nomenclature
Symbols
B
Formation volume factor
c
Compressibility
C
Concentration, Constant related to the heat of adsorption
D
Diffusivity
G
Gas content
K
Permeability
Mg
Gas molecular weight
P
Pressure
Langmuir pressure
PL
Saturation pressure of the gas
Po
Gas mass flow rate
qg
R
Universal gas constant
s
Saturation
T
Temperature
v
Velocity
Langmuir volume
VL
Maximum adsorption gas volume
Vm
V(p)
Gas volume of adsorption
Z
Gas compressibility factor

Porosity

Viscosity
Superscripts
f
m
mf

Fracture
Matrix
Exchange between matrix and fracture

Subscripts
g
w

Gas
Water

Abbreviations
ADETL
BHP
EDFM
EGR
IUPAC
LCEE
LRE
MINC
MSCF
MMSCF
SRV
TOC

Automatically differentiable expression templates library

Bottom hole pressure
Embedded discrete fractures model
Enhanced gas recovery
International union of pure and applied chemistry
Long-term CO2-EGR efficiency
Long-term re-fracturing efficiency
Multiple interacting continua
103 standard cubic feet
106 standard cubic feet
Stimulated reservoir volume
Total organic content

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SPE-172083-MS

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