Transient Flow of a Horizontal Well with Multiple Fracture Wings in Coalbed Methane Reservoirs

Horizontal wells with multi-stage fractures have been widely used to improve coalbed methane (CBM) production from coalbed methane reservoirs. The main focus of this work is to establish a new semi-analytical method in the Laplace domain and investigate the transient pressure behavior in coalbed methane reservoirs. With the new semi-analytical method, flow regimes of a multi-fractured horizontal well in coalbed methane reservoirs were identified. In addition, the sensitivities of fracture conductivity, diffusion model, storability ratio, inter-porosity flow coefficient, adsorption index, fracture spacing, fracture asymmetry, non-planar angle, and wellbore storage were studied. Results indicate that six characteristic flow regimes can be identified for multi-fractured horizontal wells in coalbed methane reservoirs, which are bilinear flow, first linear flow, desorption-diffusion flow, first pseudo-radial flow, second linear flow, and second pseudo-radial flow. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis shows that the early flow is mainly determined by the fracture conductivity, the asymmetry factor, the non-planar angle, and the wellbore storage; while the desorption-diffusion flow regime is mainly influenced by the diffusion model, the storability ratio, the inter-porosity flow coefficient, the adsorption index, and the fracture spacing. Our work can provide a deep insight into the fluid flow mechanism of multi-fractured horizontal wells in coalbed methane reservoirs.