New Variable Compliance Method for Estimating In-Situ Stress and Leak-Off from DFIT Data

It is shown that using Carter leak-off is an oversimplification that leads to significant errors in the interpretation of DFIT data. Most importantly, this article reveals that previous methods of estimating minimum in-situ stress often lead to significant over or underestimates. Based on our modeling and simulation results, we propose a much more accurate and reliable method to estimate the minimum in-situ stress and fracture pressure dependent leak-off rate.