The Effect of Thermal Properties of Sediments on the Gas Production from Hydrate Reservoirs by Depressurization and Thermal Stimulation

Thermal property is one of the most important properties of gas hydrate-bearing sediments (GHBS). In order to investigate the effect of hydrate formation thermal properties of GHBS on the gas production by depressurization with constant bottom-hole pressure and thermal stimulation, we estimated gas production from hydrates at the SH7 drilling site of the Shenhu Area. The hydrate accumulations in the Shenhu Area are similar to Class 3 deposits (involving only one layer of GHBS), and the overburden and underburden layers are assumed to be permeable. In this paper, a single vertical well, extending through the entire GHBS thickness, was designed for the numerical simulation by means of depressurization with constant bottom-hole pressure (3 Mpa) and thermal stimulation (80 °C) method. The simulation results indicate that hydrate dissociation has low sensitivity to rock grain specific heat and dry thermal conductivity of GHBS under this condition.