The conductivity created in acid fracturing is a competition between two phenomena: etching of the rock surface and weakening of the rock. This study presents experimental results of acid fracturing conductivity experiments with polymer gelled acid, while varying contact time and rock type. The experiments were conducted in a laboratory facility properly scaled from field to laboratory conditions to account for the hydrodynamic effects that take place in the field. The rocks of study were Indiana limestone, San Andres dolomite and Texas Cream chalk. Our results illustrate that acid fracturing conductivity is governed by the etching pattern of the rock surface and influenced by the hardness of the rock. If channels are created, the fracture is more likely to retain conductivity after closure. The hardness of the rock is the dominating factor to determine the conductivity response when no channeling is present. Among the rocks tested, Texas Cream chalk had the lowest hardness measurement before and after acidizing and the fracture closed at a much lower stress compared with limestone and dolomite. Dolomite had the highest conductivity under all closure stresses even without a channeling pattern. Additionally, it was observed that a higher reduction in rock strength at the contact points for dolomite yielded lower conductivity after closure. The effects of hardness variation on conductivity are higher in dolomite than in limestone and chalk. It is apparent that longer contact times do not always provide higher conductivity after closure.

Success of acid fracturing treatment depends greatly on the created conductivity under closure stress. In order to have sufficient conductivity, the fracture face must be non-uniformly etched while the fracture strength maintained to withstand the closure stress. While there have been several experimental studies conducted on acid fracturing, most of these have not scaled experiments to field conditions and did not account for the effect of rock weakening and etching pattern. Hence, acid fracture conductivity predictions based on the above works have not been able to match actual results. In order to develop a more appropriate and accurate prediction of acid fracturing treatment outcome, a laboratory facility was developed that is properly scaled to field conditions and enables analysis of etching pattern and rock strength. A systematic experimental study that covered a variety of formations, acid types, and acid contact times was conducted. An acid fracture conductivity correlation was developed based on etched volume, etched pattern, and fracture strength under closure stress. Results suggested that there is an optimal time of acid exposure resulting in maximum fracture conductivity. There were large differences in the conductivity created with the different acid systems tested due to different etching patterns and degree of rock strength weakening. There was an optimal acid system depending on formation type, contact time and overburden stress. The acid fracture conductivities measured did not agree with the predictions of the Nierode-Kruk correlation. The newly developed correlation predicts conductivity much closer as it includes the effect of rock strength and surface etching pattern on resulting conductivity.

The conductivity created in acid fracturing is a competition between two phenomena: etching of the rock surface and weakening of the rock. This study presents experimental results of acid fracturing conductivity experiments with polymer gelled acid, while varying contact time and rock type. The experiments were conducted in a laboratory facility properly scaled from field to laboratory conditions to account for the hydrodynamic effects that take place in the field. The rocks of study were Indiana limestone, San Andres dolomite and Texas Cream chalk. Our results illustrate that acid fracturing conductivity is governed by the etching pattern of the rock surface and influenced by the hardness of the rock. If channels are created, the fracture is more likely to retain conductivity after closure. The hardness of the rock is the dominating factor to determine the conductivity response when no channeling is present. Among the rocks tested, Texas Cream chalk had the lowest hardness measurement before and after acidizing and the fracture closed at a much lower stress compared with limestone and dolomite. Dolomite had the highest conductivity under all closure stresses even without a channeling pattern. Additionally, it was observed that a higher reduction in rock strength at the contact points for dolomite yielded lower conductivity after closure. The effects of hardness variation on conductivity are higher in dolomite than in limestone and chalk. It is apparent that longer contact times do not always provide higher conductivity after closure.

Acid fracture conductivity and the effect of key variables in the etching process during acid fracturing can be assessed at the laboratory scale. This is accomplished by using an experimental apparatus that simulates acid injection fluxes comparable to those in actual acid fracture treatments. After acid etching, fracture conductivity is measured at different closure stresses. This research work presents a systematic study to investigate the effect of temperature, rock-acid contact time and initial condition of the fracture surfaces on acid fracture conductivity in the Austin Chalk formation. While temperature and rock-acid contact are variables normally studied in fracture conductivity tests, the effect of the initial condition of the fracture surface has not been extensively investigated. The experimental results showed that there is no significant difference in acid fracture conductivity at high closure stress using smooth or rough fracture surfaces. In addition, we analyzed the mechanisms of acid etching and resulting conductivity creation in the two types of fracture surfaces studied by using surface profiles. For smooth surfaces, the mechanism of conductivity creation seems connected to uneven etching of the rock and roughness generation. For rough surfaces, acid conductivity is related to smoothing and deepening of the initial features on the sample surface than by creating more roughness. Finally, we compared the experimental results with Nirode-Kruk correlation for acid fracture conductivity.

The complex interrelations among the different physical processes involved in acid fracturing make it difficult to design, and later, to predict the outcome of stimulation jobs. Actual tendencies require the use of computational models to deal with the dynamic interaction of variables. This thesis presents a new study of acidized surface textures by means of a laser profilometer to improve our understanding of the remaining etched surface topography and its hydraulic response. Visualization plots generated by the profilometer identified hydrodynamic channels that could not be identified by the naked eye in acidized surfaces. The plots clarified the existence of rock heterogeneities and revealed how the processes of dissolution function in chalk rock. Experimental data showed clearly that the effect of dissolution depends on the type of rock and the fluid system; dolomite, for example, dissolves more rapidly but more roughly than limestone. Fluid leakoff rate and temperature also affect the dissolution. Further research is necessary to clarify the effects of conductivity.

Acid fracturing stimulation is one of the preferred methods to improve well productivity in carbonate reservoirs. Acid is injected into the fractured zone after a starter fracture is created in the near wellbore area by viscous fluid (pad). This results in propagation of a two-wing crack away from the perforations with simultaneous dissolution etching of the created surfaces. If the created etched surface is non-uniform, then after the treatment ends and the fracture face closes, a high conductivity path may remain in the formation, connected to the well. The important factors controlling the effectiveness of acid fracturing are the etched-fracture penetration and conductivity. In this research, I use the distributed volumetric sources (DVS) method to calculate gas production from a well stimulated by acid fracturing. The novel concept realized in this research is that, during the production process, the conductivity of the acid created fracture changes. I use the Nierode - Kruk correlation to describe this effect as a function of effective closure stress that in turn is determined from the flowing bottomhole pressure and minimum horizontal stress. By combining the well productivity calculation from the DVS method taking into account varying fracture conductivity with gas material balance, I obtain an improved model of gas production. The model is then used to not only forecast production from acid fractured wells but also to evaluate the known production history of such wells. Based on the concepts discussed above, I have developed a program called "Gas Acid" which is useful to optimize acid fracturing treatments and also suitable to infer created fracture parameters from known production history. The "Gas Acid" program has been validated with data from two Saudi Aramco gas wells. It was found that the production forecast obtained from the "Gas Acid" program matches the actual production history with reasonable accuracy and the remaining discrepancy could be resolved by taking into account refinement of the material balance. The refinement became necessary, because the "Gas Acid" program was developed for dry gas but the reservoir fluids in the field examples were classified as retrograde gas and wet gas. When accounting for the additional mass of gas "hidden" in the produced condensate, the match of forecast and actual data was improved considerably.

Emulsified acids have been extensively used in the oil industry since 1933. Most of the available research and publications discussed mainly the application of emulsified acid in the field. A fair number of the published work also discussed in depth some of the emulsified acid properties such viscosity, stability and reactivity. However, all of the available research discussed the emulsified acid without sufficient details of its preparation. Beside their chemical composition, the ways emulsified acids are prepared cause significant differences in their physical properties. The characterization of emulsified acid by its droplet size and size distribution complements its chemical composition and gives the emulsified acid a unique description and thus reproducible properties. No previous study considered the impact of the droplet size on the characteristics and properties of emulsified acid. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to study the effects of the droplet size on various properties of emulsified acid such as viscosity, stability and reactivity. Results showed that the droplet size and size distribution have a strong effect on the stability, viscosity and diffusion rate of the emulsified acid. The results of this work are important because knowledge of the effect of the droplet size on major design parameters will guide the way emulsified acid is prepared and applied in the field.

Success of acid fracturing depends on uneven etching along the fracture surfaces caused by heterogeneities such as variations in local mineralogy and variations in leakoff behavior. The heterogeneities tend to create channeling characteristics, which provide lasting conductivity after fracture closure, and occur on a scale that is neither used in laboratory measurements of acid fracture conductivity, which use core samples that are too small to observe such a feature, nor in typical acid fracture simulations in which the grid block size is much larger than the scale of local heterogeneities. Acid fracture conductivity depends on fracture surface etching patterns. Existing acid fracture conductivity correlations are for random asperity distributions and do not consider the contribution of channels to the conductivity. An acid fracture conductivity correlation needs the average fracture width at zero closure stress. Existing correlations calculate average fracture width using dissolved rock equivalent width without considering the effect of reservoir characteristics. The purpose of this work is to develop an intermediate-scale acid fracture model with grid size small enough and the whole dimension big enough to capture local and macro heterogeneity effects and channeling characteristics in acid fracturing. The model predicts pressure field, flow field, acid concentration profiles, and fracture surface profiles as a function of acid contact time. By extensive numerical experiments with the model, we develop correlations of fracture conductivity and average fracture width at zero closure stress as a function of statistical parameters of permeability and mineralogy distributions. With the model, we analyzed the relationships among fracture surface etching patterns, conductivities, and the distributions of permeability and mineralogy. From result analysis, we found that a fracture with channels extending from the inlet to the outlet of the fracture has a high conductivity because fluid flow in deep channels needs a very small pressure drop. Such long and highly conductive channels can be created by acids if the formation has heterogeneities in either permeability or mineralogy, or both, with high correlation length in the direction of the fracture, which is the case in laminated formations.

[pt] O sucesso da estimulação por fraturamento é dependente da geração de condutividade. No fraturamento sustentado, a condutividade é governada pelas propriedades dos agentes de sustentação os quais são caracterizados por materiais uniformes, esféricos e de elevada resistência compressiva, capazes de manter a fratura condutiva mesmo em elevado estado de tensões. No fraturamento ácido, a condutividade depende da impressão irregular na superfície da fratura e da capacidade mecânica da rocha em sustentar um fluxo contínuo após o seu fechamento. A previsão de desempenho do reservatório requer, entre outros parâmetros, informações completas do modelo de fluxo e o decréscimo de pressão nas imediações do poço, a geometria e a condutividade resultante após o fraturamento possui grande influência nesta análise. O propósito deste trabalho visa investigar experimentalmente, a partir de testemunhos de carbonatos profundos, o comportamento de fraturas ácidas e sustentadas em diferentes estágios de tensão, desenvolver uma proposta de calibração do modelo empírico desenvolvido por Nierode e Kruk a fim de estimarmos a condutividade resultante utilizando dados de perfis com base em propriedades dinâmicas e composição mineralógica, e avaliar o impacto da condutividade na produtividade de um poço. Baseado na análise dos resultados concluiu que, é possível obter fratura ácida condutiva sob as tensões confinantes esperadas em carbonatos profundos e que fraturas sustentadas apresentam maiores condutividades, determinada pela característica do agente de sustentação utilizado, não sofrendo influência significativa com o incremento de tensão, ao contrário do fraturamento ácido. A partir dos dados indiretos obtidos de perfil a poço aberto, é possível obter uma estimativa da distribuição da condutividade de fraturas ácidas sem necessidade de testemunhos. Ao simularmos os ganhos de produtividade a partir de diversas variáveis disponíveis em cada técnica estudada de estimulação é possível ratificar que, não existe solução única indicada para carbonatos e que, a permeabilidade do meio é o fator preponderante na decisão. / [en] A well-succeeded fracturing stimulation depends on conductivity creation, which is ruled by the propping agent in sustained fracturing. These agents are characterized by uniform spherical materials of high compressive resistance, besides being capable of keeping conductivity, even under high stress state. Acid fracture conductivity depends on uneven etching on the surface of the fracture wall, as well as on the mechanical capacity of the rock to support a continuous flow after the fracture is closed. Reservoir performance predictions require, among other parameters, complete information about the flow model and about the pressure decreased around the well. The resulting geometry and conductivity after fracturing have great influence on these predictions. The aim of the present study is to experimentally investigate the behavior of acid fractures supported by different stress stages according to deep carbonate samples, as well as to develop a calibration proposition to the empirical model developed by Nierode and Kruk, in order to estimate the resulting conductivity by using data logging based on dynamic properties and mineralogical compositions. Moreover, it aims at assessing the impact of conductivity on the productivity of the well. Results of the herein performed analysis allowed concluding that it is possible to get an acid fracture under the confining stress expected for deep carbonates, and that sustained fractures have higher conductivity, which is set by the characteristics of the adopted propping agent. Therefore, different from the acid fracturing, these sustained fractures are not significantly influenced by higher stress. Based on the indirect data collected from the profile of the well, it was possible estimating acid fracture conductivity distribution, without the need of samples. The simulated productivity increase based on the different variables available for each of the assessed stimulation techniques made it possible ratifying that there is no single solution recommended for carbonates, and that the medium permeability is the main factor influencing the decision making process.