Effect of fracture compressibility on oil recovery from stress-sensitive naturally fractured reservoirs

The tank material balance (MB) equation for undersaturated and saturated reservoirs has been written taking into account the effective compressibility of matrix and fractures. The solution is presented in finite difference form to achieve a quick convergence of the iteration process. Historically, compressibility has been neglected when carrying out MB calculations of conventional reservoirs producing below the bubble point. This assumes that the reservoir strata are static. It is shown however, that under some conditions, fracture compressibility can have a significant impact on oil rates and recoveries of naturally fractured reservoirs (NFRs) performing below the bubble point, as the fracture permeability and fracture porosity are stress-dependent. Other stress-sensitive properties discussed in this paper include the partitioning coefficient and the exponent for the shape of relative permeability curves. The use of the MB finite difference equations is illustrated with an example.