Impact of Hydraulic Fracture Conductivity Modeling on Well Performance and Development in Unconventional Reservoirs

Reservoir simulation of unconventional resources has become increasingly important due to advancing technologies and the growing demand for efficient hydrocarbon recovery. These reservoirs pose distinct challenges related to characterization, multiphase flow behavior, and production forecasting. To address these complexities, modern simulation workflows integrate geological, petrophysical, and fluid-property data to better represent subsurface behavior. Because hydraulic fractures provide the primary pathways for fluid flow in unconventional reservoirs, accurately modeling fracture geometry and conductivity is essential for generating reliable reserves, production forecasts, and field development plans. Fracture conductivity is influenced by several coupled processes, including fracture propagation, proppant transport, proppant placement, and stress-dependent permeability, making its accurate estimation difficult. Although commercial hydraulic fracturing software incorporates geomechanical and particle-transport algorithms to predict conductivity, their outputs are not always directly compatible with reservoir simulation models and often fail to reproduce observed production behavior. This disconnect has contributed to ongoing debate regarding the appropriate level of complexity required for conductivity modeling in practical reservoir engineering applications. This study investigates these challenges by reviewing conductivity correlations in the literature and implementing them in commercial software, and evaluating their performance within reservoir simulation. A fracture model is built using public data and is subsequently integrated into a mechanistic reservoir simulation framework to assess the influence of various conductivity models on pressure distribution, depletion patterns, and production forecasts. The results provide insights into the limitations of existing approaches and offer recommendations for conductivity modeling strategies that are practical to implement while adequately capturing key fracture characteristics. These findings aim to narrow the gap between geomechanical predictions and reservoir simulation needs, ultimately improving the reliability of production forecasting in unconventional reservoirs.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Petroleum Engineering

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Gachanja, Cecilia Mugure

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Farouq Ali, S.M.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Razavi, Mehdi
• Zargar, Zeinab

• Fracture Conductivity

Language dc:language.iso

English

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10657/20867

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/20867