Investigating the Tail Behavior of Hydrocarbon Production Curves

Understanding the physical mechanisms that control the production of hydrocarbon from natural gas wells is important in both the energy and environmental sectors. The short-term behavior is relatively well understood as coming from the hydrocarbon within the large-scale fracture network. However, the physical processes that contribute to the long-term production in the tail is not as well understood. In this work, we investigate how diffusion in the rock matrix, the size of the damaged zone around the large fracture network, and the percentage of free gas within the large fractures contribute to the tailing behavior of the hydrocarbon production curve through modeling fracture networks.