Numerical Simulation of Fracture Initiation and Propagation in Oil Shale Horizontal Wells

With the development of economy, conventional oil and gas resources can no longer meet people’s needs. Looking for additional oil resources has become one of the problems that must be solved at present. In recent years, the maturity of oil shale in-situ mining technology has made oil shale come into people’s view again after two centuries. Oil shale is rich in reserves and has broad prospects for development, but the efficiency of oil shale in-situ mining is not high at present. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out hydraulic fracturing and fracture making transformation to increase the overheated area of oil shale. This can increase oil and gas transmission channels and solve the problem of low heating efficiency. Hydraulic fracturing fracturing treatment of oil shale to achieve short-term production increase is of great significance to ease the contradiction between energy supply and demand and promote healthy economic development. In this paper, ABAQUS software is used to study the initiation and propagation of water fracturing fractures in horizontal wells of oil shale. The main research contents and results are as follows: Analyze the fracture initiation and propagation of oil shale horizontal wells. Based on the two-dimensional fracture model of oil shale horizontal wells, the simulation of complex fracture network formed by the intersection of hydraulic fractures and natural fractures is carried out by embedding Cohesive. It is concluded that the distribution of the width of the complex seam mesh is very different. It is in the shape of “wide in the middle and narrow around”. The seam length increases in a “ladder” way. This paper mainly studies the initiation and propagation of hydraulic fracturing fractures in horizontal wells of oil shale through theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. It is hoped that it can provide some reference for oil shale in-situ mining in the future.