Hydraulic fracture characterization resulting from low-viscosity fluid injection: Implications for CO2 sequestration

The initiation of hydraulic fractures during CO2 sequestration can be either engineered or induced unintentionally. Some fractures may be desirable such as horizontal fractures that can facilitate fluid injection and migration; whereas some fractures may be unfavorable if the fractures tend to extend vertically above a certain limit, thus creating a potential leaking condition. Historically, carbon dioxide as a liquefied gas has been used in oil and gas field stimulation since the early1960s because it eliminates formation damage and residual fluids. Carbon dioxide injection is considered to be one of the most effective technologies for improving oil recovery from hard-to-extract oil reserves because CO2 is effective in penetrating the formation due to its high diffusivity, while the rock associated with petroleum-containing formations is generally porous. However, low viscosity and high compressibility fluids such as CO2 exhibit different effects on the hydraulic fracture initiation/propagation behavior in comparison with high viscosity and low compressibility fluids. Laboratory tests show that viscous fluids tend to generate thick and planar cracks with few branches, while low viscosity fluids tend to generate narrow and wavelike cracks with many secondary branches. A numerical comparison between water and supercritical CO2-like fluid has been made to investigate the influence of fluids to fracture propagation behavior. Simulation results indicate that the pore pressure fields are very different for different pore fluids even when the initial field conditions and injection schemes (rate and time) are kept the same. Thin fluids with properties of supercritical CO2 will create relatively thin and much shorter fractures in comparison to fluids exhibiting properties of water under similar injection schemes. Two significant times are recognized during fracture propagation. One is the time at which a crack ceases opening, and he other is the time at which a crack ceases propagating, with the former always occurring before the latter. These times are very different for different fluids. Both fluid compressibility and viscosity are important in the behavior of fracture propagation with viscosity being the most important property. Viscosity can greatly affect the magnitude of hydraulic conductivity and the value of the leak-off coefficient. This study has important implications for CO2 sequestration.