Summary: The increasing activities in tight reservoir exploitation through fractured wells have attracted interests of pressure-transient analysis (PTA) for well-performance evaluation. The production rates of different fractures were assumed to be equal in previous models. However, different fractures have unequal contributions to the total-gas-production rate because of the differences of fracture scale (e.g., half-length, height), heterogeneity of gas saturation, formation damage, and fracture closure. This paper considers the effect of unequal gas-production rate of each fracture (UGPREF) on pressure-transient behaviors, and develops a semianalytical methodology to diagnose the specific locations of underperforming fractures through PTA by use of bottomhole-pressure (BHP) data. First, new semianalytical solutions of a multifractured horizontal well (MFHW) in a tight gas reservoir are derived on the basis of the Green function (Gringarten and Ramey 1973) and Newman product method (Newman 1936). Second, the model is validated by comparison with the numerical model in KAPPA Ecrin (Saphir) software (Essca 2011). Third, type curves are developed, and sensitivity analysis is further investigated. Results show that there exist clear distinctions among these type curves between equal gas-production rate of each fracture (EGPREF) and UGPREF. The early radial flow is distinguishable and behaves as a horizontal line with the value of 0.5/N* (N* = N for EGPREF, N*≠N for UGPREF) in the pseudopressure-derivative curves when the interferences between fractures do not overlap this period. If the early-radial flow was mistakenly regarded as pseudoradial flow, the interpreted permeability would be N* times smaller than the accurate result. Furthermore, the methodology is applied to a field case of the Daniudi tight gas reservoir in the Ordos Basin, which illustrates its physical consistency and practicability to diagnose the specific locations of underperforming hydraulic fractures through pressure-history matching. It also provides feasible references for reservoir engineers in well-performance evaluation and field strategy (e.g., refracturing, acidizing, or other stimulation treatments) to enhance hydrocarbon production.

Although technical advances in hydraulically fracturing and drilling enable commercial production from tight reservoirs, oil/gas recovery remains at a low level. Due to the technical and economic limitations of well-testing operations in tight reservoirs, rate-transient analysis (RTA) has become a more attractive option. However, current RTA models hardly consider the effect of the non-uniform production on rate decline behaviors. In fact, PLT results demonstrate that production profile is non-uniform. To fill this gap, this paper presents an improved RTA model of multi-fractured horizontal wells (MFHWs) to investigate the effects of non-uniform properties of hydraulic fractures (production of fractures, fracture half-length, number of fractures, fracture conductivity, and vertical permeability) on rate transient behaviors through the diagnostic type curves. Results indicate obvious differences on the rate decline curves among the type curves of uniform properties of fractures (UPF) and non-uniform properties of fractures (NPF). The use of dimensionless production integral derivative curve magnifies the differences so that we can diagnose the phenomenon of non-uniform production. Therefore, it’s significant to incorporate the effects of NPF into the RDA models of MFHWs, and the model proposed in this paper enables us to better evaluate well performance based on long-term production data.