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An Anisotropic Permeability Model for Shale Gas Recovery Considering Slippage Effect and Embedded Proppants

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Abstract

Hydraulic fracturing has been widely adopted to improve shale gas recovery. A main issue in the implementation of hydraulic fracturing techniques is that proppants made from a variety of materials are normally introduced for the purpose of permeability enhancement. An embedded proppant can significantly alter the original gas flow behavior of shale, which should be taken into account when estimating shale permeability. In this paper, we propose a shale anisotropic permeability model that considers the effect of proppant embedding. Moreover, because the slippage factor is usually not fixed owing to the combined effect of proppant embeddings, any adsorption-induced swelling and stress, a slippage factor formulation is developed to consider the embedded proppant. Finally, an improved shale anisotropic permeability model that considers the combined effect of proppants and slippage is proposed. The validity of the model presented in this paper was assessed by comparing the results with previous experiments, and good agreement was found for the proposed model. The developed model can estimate accurately shale anisotropic permeability, when both the proppant and slippage effect are considered, and can be used to study related problems in the recovery of shale gas resources.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51804085 and 51911530203) and the Science and Technology Funding Projects of Guizhou Province (No. J2015-2049).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Mining, Guizhou University, Guiyang, 550025, People’s Republic of China

    Jianhua Li, Bobo Li, Chonghong Ren, Kang Yang & Shuai Chen

  2. Guizhou Key Laboratory of Comprehensive Utilization of Non-metallic Mineral Resources, Guiyang, 550025, People’s Republic of China

    Bobo Li

  3. National & Local Joint Laboratory of Engineering for Effective Utilization of Regional Mineral Resources from Karst Areas, Guizhou University, Guiyang, 550025, People’s Republic of China

    Bobo Li

  4. School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 5005, Australia

    Zhihe Wang

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  1. Jianhua Li
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Correspondence to Bobo Li.

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Li, J., Li, B., Wang, Z. et al. An Anisotropic Permeability Model for Shale Gas Recovery Considering Slippage Effect and Embedded Proppants. Nat Resour Res 29, 3319–3333 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11053-020-09660-0

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