Abstract—So far, some of the domestic oil-fields have entered the high water cut stage after a long term production, and the objects of the exploration are shifting from thick and high quality pay zones to the thin and poor pay zones. For the development of thin and poor reservoir, hydraulic fracturing is an extremely effective measure to enhance production, but the fracture height always gets out of control when stimulating these kind of pay zones. Considering the problem, the paper firstly summarized the factors affecting fracture height based on literature researches; then an orthogonal design including seven factors of five level was made according to the reservoir parameters and construction parameters of M Oil-field, and the fracture propagation under each situation was simulated with FracproPT. On the grounds of simulation results, further sensitivity analysis and single factor analysis were conducted. The results turn out that factors impacting fracture height are sequentially: in-situ stress contrast between barrier layer and target layer, total amount of fracture fluid, pumping rate, fracture fluid viscosity, Young modulus contrast, reservoir permeability and fracture toughness contrast. Finally, the paper gives strategies to confine the fracture vertical growth in the light of simulation results, and a field case was used to certify the feasibility of the strategy. The research can help to optimize the hydraulic fracturing design and guide the on-site treatment.

Index Terms—thin and poor pay zones, hydraulic fracturing, fracture height containment, factors affecting fracture height, orthogonal design

Cite: Xiang Zhou, Shicheng Zhang, Xinfang Ma, and Kaiyu Liu, "Research on Fracture Height Containment in Poor and Thin Pay Zones," Journal of Industrial and Intelligent Information, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 324-328, December 2014. doi: 10.12720/jiii.2.4.324-328