Summary Flowback data collected after hydraulic fracturing provide valuable information for characterizing hydraulic fracture (HF) properties through rate transient analysis (RTA). However, most existing flowback RTA methods for shale gas reservoirs neglect condensate dropout, limiting their applicability to gas-condensate reservoirs. For this study, we developed a 2D three-phase flowback model with three-phase influx that captures the two primary flow regimes, which are infinite-acting linear flow (IALF) and boundary-dominated flow (BDF). The proposed framework enables analysis of flowback data under HF depletion conditions, even in the presence of condensate dropout. To enhance its diagnostic capability, the Walsh material balance formulation is revised to estimate the average HF pressure, and phase-specific pseudovariables are redefined to generate diagnostic plots for flow regime identification and HF characterization. The proposed iterative solution procedure is validated against numerical simulation results. Estimated HF half-length and initial HF permeability from the three-phase flowback model closely match the numerical model input values, with relative errors below 10%. The applicability of the model is further demonstrated using flowback data from a fractured well in the Khazzan field. These results demonstrate that the proposed three-phase flowback RTA framework provides improved physical insight into early-time HF behavior and the initial evolution of condensate within the HF-matrix system.
Yang et al. (2026) studied this question.