Optimizing petrophysical parameters of heterogeneous coal bed methane reservoir using numerical investigations

Abstract

The influence of cleat permeability and porosity on the cumulative gas produced is studied. The cleat parameters are weighed for producing reserve in the least time and the minimum breakdown pressure requirement to create fractures. The reservoir is stimulated. The breakdown pressure required is more to create fractures at closer spacing than needed to increase the width of new fractures. The non-linear hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDE) are solved by the implicit finite difference method. Cleat permeability has a more significant influence on the gas produced than the porosity. Optimized values of 300 mD and 0.03 porosity sweep more area in a short time. Due to the faster propagation of drainage, the adsorbed gas is not recovered to nearly complete before the entire reservoir/pay zone length is drained. Fracturing a formation can be successful if the same adsorbed gas is spread over a larger area, and length is insufficient to accommodate the gas in place. The pay zone length needs to be larger than the present value. The novel approach of checking both the economic feasibility of fracturing a formation and its relation with the length of the reservoir, is discovered and solved here.

Keywords:

• breakdown pressure
• cleat
• coal bed methane
• proppants
• optimization