Application of a New Fracture-Injection/Falloff Model Accounting for Propagating, Dilated, and Closing Hydraulic Fractures

A new fracture-injection/falloff type-curve analysis method is presented for reservoirs containing slightly compressible and compressible fluids. Type-curve analysis augments conventional before- and after-closure methods, which are also reformulated in terms of adjusted pseudopressure and adjusted pseudotime to account for compressible reservoir fluids. Unlike before- and after-closure methods which only apply to specific (i.e., small) portions of the falloff data, the new type-curve method allows for analyzing all falloff data from the end of the injection through fracture closure, pseudolinear flow, and pseudoradial flow. Similar to conventional well test analysis, a satisfactory interpretation requires comparable and consistent results between the special analysis methods, before- and after-closure, and type-curve analysis.