Study of the Effect of Fracture Completion Variables on Decline Curve Parameters for Long-Term Production Forecast of Shale Liquids

Shale reservoir exploitation using multiple stage hydraulically fractured horizontal wells has proved the existence of considerable amount of oil and gas reserves throughout the world. Forecasts of future production from these reservoirs based on the fracture stimulation parameters and reservoir properties has led to a better understanding of the duration of important flow regimes and parameters used in production forecasting models. The decline curve analysis considered in the study is a combination of the traditional Arps and Stretched Exponential production decline models designed to fit the forecasts for individual flow regime production data. Simulations using identical reservoir properties but different fracture completion parameters were analyzed and fit to decline models. The parameters considered in our study are fracture half-length, fracture spacing, stimulated reservoir volume permeability and matrix permeability.