FRACTURED PETROLEUM RESERVOIRS
The four chapters that are described in this report cover a variety of subjects that not only give insight into the understanding of multiphase flow in fractured porous media, but they provide also major contribution towards the understanding of flow processes with in-situ phase formation. In the following, a summary of all the chapters will be provided. Chapter I addresses issues related to water injection in water-wet fractured porous media. There are two parts in this chapter. Part I covers extensive set of measurements for water injection in water-wet fractured porous media. Both single matrix block and multiple matrix blocks tests are covered. There are two major findings from these experiments: (1) co-current imbibition can be more efficient than counter-current imbibition due to lower residual oil saturation and higher oil mobility, and (2) tight fractured porous media can be more efficient than a permeable porous media when subjected to water injection. These findings are directly related to the type of tests one can perform in the laboratory and to decide on the fate of water injection in fractured reservoirs. Part II of Chapter I presents modeling of water injection in water-wet fractured media by modifying the Buckley-Leverett Theory. A major element of the new model is the multiplication of the transfer flux by the fractured saturation with a power of 1/2. This simple model can account for both co-current and counter-current imbibition and computationally it is very efficient. It can be orders of magnitude faster than a conventional dual-porosity model. Part II also presents the results of water injection tests in very tight rocks of some 0.01 md permeability. Oil recovery from water imbibition tests from such at tight rock can be as high as 25 percent. Chapter II discusses solution gas-drive for cold production from heavy-oil reservoirs. The impetus for this work is the study of new gas phase formation from in-situ process which can be significantly different from that of gas displacement processes. The work is of experimental nature and clarifies several misconceptions in the literature. Based on experimental results, it is established that the main reason for high efficiency of solution gas drive from heavy oil reservoirs is due to low gas mobility. Chapter III presents the concept of the alteration of porous media wettability from liquid-wetting to intermediate gas-wetting. The idea is novel and has not been introduced in the petroleum literature before. There are significant implications from such as proposal. The most direct application of intermediate gas wetting is wettability alteration around the wellbore. Such an alteration can significantly improve well deliverability in gas condensate reservoirs where gas well deliverability decreases below dewpoint pressure. Part I of Chapter III studies the effect of gravity, viscous forces, interfacial tension, and wettability on the critical condensate saturation and relative permeability of gas condensate systems. A simple phenomenological network model is used for this study, The theoretical results reveal that wettability significantly affects both the critical gas saturation and gas relative permeability. Gas relative permeability may increase ten times as contact angle is altered from 0{sup o} (strongly liquid wet) to 85{sup o} (intermediate gas-wetting). The results from the theoretical study motivated the experimental investigation described in Part II. In Part II we demonstrate that the wettability of porous media can be altered from liquid-wetting to gas-wetting. This part describes our attempt to find appropriate chemicals for wettability alteration of various substrates including rock matrix. Chapter IV provides a comprehensive treatment of molecular, pressure, and thermal diffusion and convection in porous media Basic theoretical analysis is presented using irreversible thermodynamics.
- Research Organization:
- Reservoir Engineering Research Institute (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG22-96BC14850
- OSTI ID:
- 825891
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 11 Jun 1999
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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