Dakshina Valiveti, ExxonMobil
Hydraulic fracturing has significantly transformed the oil and gas industry enabling economic production of hydrocarbons from very low permeability shale formations. It involves injection of fracturing fluids into deep reservoir zones at pressures that overcome the compressive in-situ stress, creating fractures in the rocks to generate large permeable pathways for hydrocarbons to reach the well. Uncertainties in subsurface stress state and rock mechanical properties drive the need for numerical simulations to understand the complex multi-physics involved. This talk will present the overview of hydraulic fracturing, computational challenges, some of our evolving technical efforts for more than a decade towards understanding the mechanics of the fluid driven fracturing, in turn developing a scalable simulator, building surrogate models, and constraining models with field observations.
