Determination of ISIP of Non-Ideal Behavior During Diagnostic Fracture Injection Tests

Abstract The instantaneous shut-in pressure (ISIP) serves as an indication of the excess pressure in the hydraulic fracture due to the effect of fluid viscosity and pressure required to break the formation at the fracture tip. The ISIP value will be close to or at the fracture propagation pressure and will be greater than the fracture pressure. The ISIP is often estimated to be the pressure after the pumps are shut down, and the beginning of a pressure decline. Many approaches have been developed to estimate the ISIP from the falloff data. The development of these approaches is attributed to the persistent trials due to the difficulty of quantifying the ISIP value accurately. Giving bottomhole pressures, ISIP can be estimated by subtracting the friction pressure drop from bottomhole pressure. This approach tends to overestimate the value of ISIP as it doesn't account for friction near the wellbore or through the perforations. Another common approach to estimate ISIP is by drawing a straight line on the early falloff portion of the Diagnostic Fracture Injection Tests (DFIT). Previous studies show that the choice of ISIP affects the net pressure calculations, but not the slope of the derivative curves and the flow regime identification. This paper presents field cases where the values of ISIP affects the interpretation of the reservoir characteristics. Thus, the determination of accurate ISIP is very crucial. This paper reviews the previously proposed approaches for determining the ISIP and provide a state of the art simple method to determine ISIP from non-ideal falloff data. The ISIP determined from the proposed method is verified by examination of the semi-log derivative plot, and the interpreted reservoir characteristics were found to be consistent with both field and lab observations. The method was validated using field DFITs falloff data from high-pressure dependent leakoff formations as well as formations that yield normal leakoff pressure dependent. The novelty of the proposed method is in the simplicity of determination of ISIP and the consistency with the field observations. A number of field examples from the Barnett shale are illustrated using mechanisms previously proposed in the literature as well as the method presented in this paper. The later provided consistent ISIP values after multiple iterations. Subsequently, the reservoir characteristics and calculated parameters were uniform within the same pad of wells.