Near-wellbore tortuosity directly influences the flow efficiency between the wellbore and the rock matrix. The tortuosity-induced pressure drop elevates the injection pressure required for reservoir stimulation, as well as increasing the fluid circulation pressure during production, leading to high long-term energy consumption and operational costs. In this paper, we present a three-dimensional thermo-hydro-mechanical numerical model to investigate the hydraulic fracture propagation in the near-wellbore region. The study is based on the Stage 4 stimulation of Well 16A(78)-32 at the Utah FORGE site completed in 2024, which used a case-hole approach and slickwater as the fracturing fluid. The model takes a discrete element modeling approach and explicitly represents the well casing, cement sheath, and 36 perforation tunnels. This enables a detailed representation of the complex stress field resulting from the combined effects of subsurface in-situ stresses and stress concentrations around the wellbore and perforations. Furthermore, the model simulates the cooling effect on the stress field in the near-wellbore region, accounting for thermal responses within the casing-cement-perforation-rock structure. The simulation results highlight complex near-wellbore fracture growth phases, including fracture initiation, merging, longitudinal fracture growth, and transverse fracture growth. The predicted early-time bottomhole pressure from the simulation shows reasonable agreement with the field data within an acceptable range of deviation.

Press the Back button in your browser, or search again.

Copyright 2025, Stanford Geothermal Program: Readers who download papers from this site should honor the copyright of the original authors and may not copy or distribute the work further without the permission of the original publisher.