Enhanced Recovery From Naturally Fractured Gas Reservoirs With Seismic Vibrations

Water level rising in fracture networks of a naturally fractured gas reservoir is extremely challenging and can significantly decrease the ultimate recovery due to reservoir heterogeneity. Although capillary drainage and gravity force can enhance the displacement of gas recovery from matrix to fracture, these forces may not be so effective in mobilizing a large amount of trapped gas through the matrix. So called, the use of seismic wave can be suggested as a low cost and environmentally friendly enhanced method compared with the other conventional enhanced methods. This article is aimed to examine the ability of seismic vibration in generating an efficient driving force for moving the remaining gas into the fracture which, to the best of the author’s knowledge, has not been reported so far. To this end, an in-house numerical simulator has been developed to investigate this enhanced recovery method and also to evaluate the effect of wave characteristics as well as rock properties on the ultimate recovery. The governing equations are solved numerically using finite difference approach and the accuracy of these equations was compared with a commercial simulator for verification. The results are very encouraging and show substantial gas recovery enhancement by applying seismic waves. Our investigation also shows that this stimulation method is more efficient at lower frequencies and also in higher permeable matrix and fractures.