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Title: Innovative techniques for the description of reservoir heterogeneity using tracers. Second technical annual progress report, October 1991--September 1992

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/10142202· OSTI ID:10142202

This second annual report on innovative uses of tracers for reservoir characterization contains four sections each describing a novel use of oilfield tracers. The first section describes and illustrates the use of a new single-well tracer test to estimate wettability. This test consists of the injection of brine containing tracers followed by oil containing tracers, a shut-in period to allow some of the tracers to react, and then production of the tracers. The inclusion of the oil injection slug with tracers is unique to this test, and this is what makes the test work. We adapted our chemical simulator, UTCHEM, to enable us to study this tracer method and made an extensive simulation study to evaluate the effects of wettability based upon characteristic curves for relative permeability and capillary pressure for differing wetting states typical of oil reservoirs. The second section of this report describes a new method for analyzing interwell tracer data based upon a type-curve approach. Theoretical frequency response functions were used to build type curves of ``transfer function`` and ``phase spectrum`` that have dimensionless heterogeneity index as a parameter to characterize a stochastic permeability field. We illustrate this method by analyzing field tracer data. The third section of this report describes a new theory for interpreting interwell tracer data in terms of channeling and dispersive behavior for reservoirs. Once again, a stochastic approach to reservoir description is taken. The fourth section of this report describes our simulation of perfluorocarbon gas tracers. This new tracer technology developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory is being tested at the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 in California. We report preliminary simulations made of these tracers in one of the oil reservoirs under evaluation with these tracers in this field. Our compostional simulator (UTCOMP) was used for this simulation study.

Research Organization:
Texas Univ., Austin, TX (United States). Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
AC22-90BC14653
OSTI ID:
10142202
Report Number(s):
DOE/BC/14653-T9; ON: DE94009896; BR: AC1510100
Resource Relation:
Other Information: PBD: [1992]
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English