Abstract

Hydraulic fracturing has been an effective technique to stimulate damaged wells or wells producing from low-permeability formation. It has been established that the orientation of a hydraulic fracture is perpendicular to the direction of the least principal stress in the formation. Thus, most pressure transient analysis techniques are based on the assumption that the fracture is vertical. However, it is now generally agreed that the direction of the least principal stress is not always parallel or perpendicular to the plane of the formation. For this reason it is very likely that some hydraulically fractured wells have inclined fractures.