Experimental Study on the Effects of Pore Pressure and Slippage on the Permeability of a Fracture Network during Depressurization of Shale Gas Reservoir Production

[Image: see text] Hydraulic fracturing technology is an important technical means to increase shale gas production. The seepage channels formed in the hydraulic fractures during hydraulic fracturing can help increase reservoir permeability. Therefore, it is of significance to study the seepage law of the fracture network after reservoir hydraulic fracturing. In this study, hydraulic fracturing is used to fracture full-diameter shale cores, and three typical forms of hydraulic fracture networks are obtained. The characteristics of the fracture networks are analyzed by X-ray CT scanning. The effects of pore pressure and slippage on the permeability of the fracture networks are simulated by conducting experiments. The experimental results show that in the direction of gas seepage, hydraulic fractures completely penetrate the sample, and the greater the diameter and volume of the fracture, the better the hydraulic fracture conductivity. When the confining pressure remains unchanged at 50 MPa, the apparent permeability values of the hydraulic fractures with the worst and best fracture morphologies increase by 44.4 times and 2.8 times, respectively, with the decrease in the pore pressure from 30 to 2 MPa. The apparent permeability of the shale samples has a power function relationship with the pore pressure. The test results also show that the absolute permeability is positively correlated with the number of effective seepage channels in the hydraulic fractures and the number of hydraulic fractures, whereas the Klinkenberg coefficient is negatively correlated. Our research results can provide a basis for shale gas production model research and for on-site production capacity improvement. The qualitative understanding and scientific explanation of the effects of pore pressure and slippage on fracture network permeability in the process of depressurization of reservoir production have been realized.