Study on the Interference Law of Staged Fracturing Crack Propagation in Horizontal Wells of Tight Reservoirs

[Image: see text] Horizontal well multistage fracturing technology is a high-efficiency method for tight oil and gas production, which increases the contact area between the wellbore and stratum by forming multiple transverse hydraulic fractures (HFs). The stress interference caused by the created HFs will affect the propagation geometries of the subsequent HFs, and then affect the overall fracturing treatment performance. In order to study the distribution of HFs and law of interference among multiple fractures during horizontal well multistage fracturing in tight reservoirs, in this paper, the effects of horizontal stress difference, perforation spacing, and net pressure in the created fracture on the initiation and propagation of multiple cracks were specially studied through large-scale hydraulic fracturing experiments and numerical simulation. The results showed that under high horizontal stress difference, multiple HFs with small spacing tended to coalesce at a place where the length has extended to a certain level. It was also found that the initiation pressures of HFs within subsequent stages increase with the rise of net pressure in created HFs, which causes the subsequent fractures to deviate from the direction perpendicular to the horizontal wellbore and then to gradually deflect toward it. Moreover, the ratio of fracture spacing to fracture height, and the net pressure are the key parameters to determine the deflection degree of HFs for multistage fracturing. In addition, the deflection degree of subsequent HFs was expected to enhance with the decreasing ratio of fracture spacing to fracture height and increasing net pressure in created HFs. It was useful for mitigating stress interference to lengthen the stage spacing, control the fracture height, and reduce the net pressure. The research results have a reference value for the optimal design of the fracture spacing for multistage fracturing.