Fluid Dynamics

This paper examines the prospect of Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage (GAGD) process in improving recovery from a sandstone reservoir by injecting produced gas back into the crestal part of the reservoir. Besides recovery improvement, immiscible gas injection ensures near Zero Flaring strategy. The process has been found to be ideal in reservoirs with high permeability and reasonable dip to maximize oil production wherever a sufficient gas source exists. Based on the study, gas injection is recommended at the crestal part of the reservoir under study at the rate equivalent to the produced gas to maintain pressure, arrest gas cap shrinkage and improve recovery.

Estimating the effective permeability and microfracture (MF) conductivity for unconventional reservoirs can be challenging; however, a new method for estimating using a stochastic approach is discussed. This new analysis method estimates matrix permeability and the unpropped and propped MF conductivities during laboratory testing where MFs were propped with ultrafine particles (UFPs).

Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations form the basis of the method used to estimate effective permeability of the core sample. First, the stochastic model was implemented to calculate effective matrix permeability of a small core taken from unfractured Eagle Ford and Marcellus formation samples using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and adsorption data to obtain the pore-size distribution (PSD) within the sample. The KMC approach then evaluated the effect of various parameters influencing the conductivity of laboratory-created MFs. Case studies considered for this work investigate the conductivity improvement of a manmade MF as a function of the UFPs used as proppants that maintain width under high stress, the UFP (proppant) concentration, and the UFP flow perpendicular into a secondary or adjacent MF zone (2^ndMF) penetrating the face of an opened MF during flow testing under stress. The leakoff area widths considered were 1, 2, and 3 mm and can be propped or unpropped.

Results obtained for the unfractured Eagle Ford and Marcellus samples closely correlate with other computational and experimental data available. For the laboratory-prepared nonpropped and propped MF samples, the effective propped width was determined to have the greatest effect on the MF conductivity, which increased by two orders of magnitude in the presence of the UFPs. The remaining two factors—proppant concentration and length of 2^ndMFs—helped improve the effective MF conductivity in a linear manner; the highest proppant concentration and the 2^ndMF zone resulted in the highest fracture conductivity achieved. Insight obtained from this study can be used to optimize fracturing designs by including UFPs and to create strategies for maximizing hydrocarbon recovery during development of unconventional resources where MFs are opened during stimulation treatments.

With respect to the sharp increase in population all around the world, more and more energy and fuels are expected to achieve the counterbalance between supply and demand. Deeply attracted by its considerable and prospect recovery reserve, the exploitation, development and related research contents regarding coalbed methane (CBM), i.e., one of the unconventional gas reservoirs, are currently heat and essential topics. Without any doubt, precise determination of coal permeability will dramatically contribute to the development efficiency of CBM reservoirs. It should be noted that the permeability in CBM reservoirs possesses unique heterogeneous characteristics, especially for the different permeability at directions of face cleats and butt cleats, which will inevitably result in greatly shape-change for fluid flow field and eventually the production performance. To my best knowledge, nearly all the previous methods proposed for evaluating coal permeability assume the homogeneous permeability feature in CBM reservoirs, which show fairly great discrepancy compared with that of the realistic situation. In this work, in order to address this urgent issue, a novel permeability evaluation method is developed for the first time, which is able to generate precisely heterogeneous characteristics of coal permeability based on the water production rate versus production time curve at the early production stage. First of all, considering both orthotropic heterogeneous permeability and pressure propagation behavior in CBM reservoirs, single water phase productivity equation is seriously derived. Secondly, for simply usage purpose in field application, the obtained equation is transformed through linearization treat. Finally, combining the water production performance with the linearized equation, efficient iteration calculation procedures are given to determine the heterogeneous permeability feature. Also, the skin factor of corresponding CBM well can be determined. The applicability and accuracy of the proposed method have been successfully verified through field application. In sum, the proposed method can serve as a simple as well as an accurate tool to determine the crucial heterogeneous permeability feature in CBM reservoirs. More importantly, during the determination process, the method just requires the water production performance at the early production stage, which means that the obtained permeability characteristics can be utilized to guide production strategy adjustment in the following gas production stage. As a result, the proposed method can be regarded as a necessary preparatory work before gas production takes place in CBM reservoirs, which will play a positive and active role in optimization of ultimate gas recovery and well configuration.

Burgan Marrat, a deep carbonate reservoir was transferred from exploration to development team for an accelerated production of the newly discovered oil. This multi-billion barrel reservoir is spread over 450 km², has more than 40 faults, 8 compartments with large variation in oil-water contact and reservoir/fluid characteristics. The objective of this work is to understand the key uncertainties and quantify their impact on the reservoir offtake rate and oil recovery by conducting uncertainty assessment.

An interdisciplinary team identified the key uncertainty parameters expected to have significant impact on the reservoir development. The range and probability distribution law for each parameter was set considering the uncertainties due to limited measurements or variation in interpretations. A Response Surface Model (RSM) was created to evaluate the uncertainties by using a base dynamic model and applying an appropriate experimental design, which allowed to efficiently study the uncertainty space with a feasible number of simulations. Using the RSM, the primary effects and interaction between parameters were quantified to rank the uncertainties based on their impact on field production.

Key uncertainty parameters were identified including eight OWCs, six fault transmissibilities, horizontal and vertical permeability multipliers, and porosity multiplier. Latin Hypercube was found to be the appropriate Experimental Design for the study considering 17 parameters and the need of building a reliable RSM that includes interactions between them. The design recommended 155 simulation cases, which were prepared and submitted automatically by the software.

Multi-time Responses were analyzed qualitatively to identify the top 5 uncertainties having material impact on field production over 20 years considering 6 existing wells and 30 new well locations. The RSM quantitative evaluation showed three parameters (OWC2, OWC4 and OWC1) having a total effect on the response higher than 10%; followed by PERMX and OWC3 with less than 5%. The other 12 parameters have total effects less than 2%, and the interactions effect is less than 0.5% for any interaction between two parameters. Contrary to the intuition, none of the faults proved impact on the reservoir production.

The results prove very useful to make a right development and appraisal strategy in early life of the reservoir. The new well locations can be ranked and prioritized to optimize the development and effectively appraise the areas with high risks.

Uncertainty assessment has value throughout the life of the reservoir. However, this study indicates that its application in early life of the reservoir can bring immense value. An uncertainty analysis on the reservoir production helps in decision-making regarding the number of wells and their locations to reach a target production by managing the risks.

In-situ gelled acids have been used for acid diversion in heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs for more than two decades. Most of the gelled systems are based on an anionic polymer that has a cleaning problem after the acid treatments that leads to formation damage. This work evaluates a new cationic-polymer acid system with the self-breaking ability for the application as an acid divergent in carbonate reservoirs.

Experimental studies have been conducted to examine the rheological properties of the polymer-based acid systems. The apparent viscosities of the live and the partially neutralized acids at pH from 0 to 5 were measured against the shear rate (0 to 1,000 s^-1). The impact of salinity and temperature (80 to 250°F) on the rheological properties of the acid system was also studied. The viscoelastic properties of the gelled acid system were evaluated using an oscillatory rheometer. Dynamic sweep tests were used to determine the elastic (G’) and viscous modulus (G") of the system. Single coreflood experiments were conducted on Indiana limestone cores to study the nature of diversion caused by the polymer-acid system. The impact of permeability contrast on the process of diversion was investigated by conducting dual coreflood experiments on Indiana limestone cores which had a permeability contrast of 1.5-20. CT scans were conducted to study the propagation of wormhole post acid injection for both single and dual corefloods.

The live acid system displayed a non-Newtonian shear-thinning behavior with the viscosity declining with temperature. For 5 wt% HCl and 20 gpt polymer content at 10 s^-1, the viscosity decreased from 230 to 40 cp with temperature increasing from 88 to 250°F. Acid spending tests demonstrated that the acid generated a gel with a significant improvement in viscosity to 260 cp (at 250°F and 10 s^-1) after it reached a pH of 2. The highly viscous gel plugged the wormhole and forced the acid that followed to the next higher permeability zone. The viscosity of gel continued to increase until it broke down to 69 cp (at 250°F and 10 s^-1) at a pH of 4.8, which provides a self-breaking system and better cleaning. Coreflood studies indicated that the wormhole and the diversion process is dependent on the temperature and the flow rate. There was no indication of any damage caused by the system. The injected acid volume to breakthrough (PVBT) decreased from 2.2 to 1.4 when the temperature increased from 150 to 250°F.

The strong elastic nature of the gel (G’= 3.976 Pa at 1 Hz) formed by the partially neutralized acid system proves its suitability as a candidate for use as a diverting agent. This novel acid-polymer system has significant promise for usage in acid diversion to improve stimulation of carbonate reservoirs.

Immiscible water-alternating-gas (iWAG) flooding is often considered as a tertiary recovery technique in waterflooded or about-to-be waterflooded reservoirs to increase oil recovery due to better mobility control and potentially favorable hysteretic changes to phase relative permeabilities. In such cases, typically, reservoir simulation models already exist and have been calibrated, often modifying saturation functions during the history matching stage. However, to utilize such models in forecasting iWAG performance, additional parameters may be required. These can be acquired by simulation of WAG coreflood experiments. While in many published cases, the parameter values obtained from matching experimental results are used without modification, this may not be advisable since the parameters are only valid at the core scale at which they were obtained. This paper discusses the challenge of systematically upscaling WAG parameters obtained at core scale to an existing full field model.

In this work, we use a multi-stage upscaling process from core scale to full field scale. The first stage uses a core scale model to match ‘representative’ core flood experiments and obtain WAG parameters. The second uses a well-to-well high-resolution 1D section of the full field model populated using gridblocks of core size to generate ‘reference’ WAG performance using the unaltered WAG parameters obtained from core. The third stage uses a similar 1D model but populated using gridblocks at full field model resolution to match the results from the reference model while adjusting the WAG parameters as little as possible. Finally, a model using the full field model resolution as well as the full field relative permeability functions which, it is assumed, have been tuned to match the history and account for dispersion is used to match the reference model results and obtain final upscaled WAG parameters.

The upscaled WAG parameters obtained at the end of this multi-stage process can be used at the field scale. This process allows clear quantification of the uncertainty associated with the upscaling process. Simulations at the third stage showed that once the full field to core scale grid size ratio exceeded a certain point (2500:1), there was a marked increase in the difference between upscaled and reference model results. It was found that if WAG parameters were changed in the full field model resolution model in order to match recovery results in the reference model, Land's parameter could change by up to 10% and relative permeability reduction factor could increase by up to 30% although it is expected that this will vary from case to case. It is therefore recommended to identify and use full field model resolutions to as close to the threshold as possible. The practice of using the core scale iWAG parameters in the full field model directly could under-estimate actual recovery, and overestimate injectivity. When considering the WAG mechanism alone, the value of the recovery underestimate increasing with pore volumes injected and, in our case, by up to 7% after injecting 1 pore volume of fluid.

This multi-stage simulation approach helps identify the adjustments required and uncertainties associated with simulating iWAG flooding in reservoir models. This approach utilizes options widely present in commercially available finite difference simulators, addresses the challenge of utilizing existing pseudo functions and provides a practical methodology through which iWAG performance forecasting can be improved.

Managing adequately pressure drawdown should be a key technical reservoir management driver due to its major impact on cash flow, acceleration and final recovery factor for operating hydraulically fracture shale gas condensate producers. Permeability should be regarded as a key dynamic property for ultra-low permeability shale reservoirs that influences shale hydrocarbon recovery. It is paramount to develop a pressure depletion plan that captures the pressure drawdown strategy and the changes in flow capacity associated to the interaction of the nano-Darcy rock and hydraulic fractures with stress dependent permeability effects.

Defining the adequate drawdown strategy would aid maximizing the economic recovery. Considering the variability of permeability with pressure drawdown should be part of the reservoir management lifecycle for unconventional shale reservoirs. This study focus on evaluating the impact of pressure drawdown strategy on initial rates and recovery for a Duvernay Gas condensate producer with an initial condensate yield of 100-150 stb/mmscf.

A sector compositional reservoir simulation model was built for a horizontal multistage hydraulically fracture Duvernay shale gas condensate producer. A full assessment of variability of permeability in the nano-Darcy rock and in the propped hydraulic fracture stages near the wellbore region was accomplished. Aggressive, moderate and conservative pressure drawdown strategies were evaluated, considering multiple operational pressure drawdown incremental ranges from 14.5 to 95 psia per day.

Results clearly indicate that implementing daily pressure drawdown increments of 22 to 29 psia per day would provide a similar recovery factor than imposing daily pressure drawdowns of 44 to 95 psia per day. However, there is a golden operating window opportunity to accelerate recovery by imposing maximum drawdown from the early days of production and bringing significant benefits of accelerating recovery with an associate increase in revenue but the benefits of this acceleration vanished in less than one year due to substantial changes in hydraulic fracture conductivity and also in the nano-Darcy rock permeability in the near wellbore region. The reduction of nano-Darcy permeability is a function of pressure, time and distance from the hydraulic fractures. According to our results, the best reservoir management practice for operating lean/medium Gas Condensate unconventional shale producers should be maximizing pressure drawdown at the early stage of the life cycle and deferring the installation of production string to maximize inflow-outflow.

Specic experiments have been designed and the experimental measurements obtained show that, not only the absolute permeability but also the gas relative permeability are sensitive to connement and that the residual gas saturation (through permeability "jail") increases with loading. This observation represents an additional source of complexity in the evaluation of low-permeability sandstone gas reservoirs. INTRODUCTION Low-permeability sandstone gas reservoirs, also called tight reservoirs, are generally considered stress-sensitive reservoirs. Numerous laboratory tests under single-phase ow have shown that the absolute permeability of these reservoir rocks decreases strongly with connement. This dependence on connement is attributed to the existence of joints and interfaces in tight rocks, which close when loading increases, as pointed out by Walsh and Brace (1984) and Warpinski and Teufel (1992).

Summary

Massive hydraulic fracturing requires an enormous consumption of water and introduces many potential environmental issues. In addition, water-based fluid tends to be trapped in formations, reducing oil/gas-phase relative permeability, and causes clay-mineral swelling, which lowers absolute permeability. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is seen as a promising alternative working fluid that poses no formation-damage risk, and it can stimulate more-complex and extensive fracture networks. However, very little, if any, extant research has quantitatively analyzed the effectiveness of CO₂ fracturing, except for some qualitative fracturing experiments that are based on acoustic emissions. In this study, we systematically examine water and CO₂ fracturing, and compare their performance on the basis of a rigorously coupled geomechanics and a fluid-heat-flow model. Parameters investigated include fluid viscosity, compressibility, in-situ stress, and rock permeability, illustrating how they affect breakdown pressure (BP) and leakoff, as well as fracturing effectiveness. It is found that (1) CO₂ has the potential to lower BP, benefiting the propagation of fractures; (2) water fracturing tends to create wider and longer tensile fractures compared with CO₂ fracturing, thereby facilitating proppant transport and placement; (3) CO₂ fracturing could dramatically enhance the complexity of artificial fracture networks even under high-stress-anisotropy conditions; (4) thickened CO₂ tends to generate simpler fracture networks than does supercritical CO₂ (SC-CO₂), but still more-complex fracture networks than fresh water; and (5) the alternative fracturing scheme (i.e., SC-CO₂ fracturing followed by thickened-CO₂ fracturing) can readily create complex fracture networks and carry proppant to keep hydraulic fractures open. This study reveals that, for intact reservoirs, water-based fracturing can achieve better fracturing performance than CO₂ fracturing; however, for naturally fractured reservoirs, CO₂ fracturing can constitute an effective way to stimulate tight/shale oil/gas reservoirs, thereby improving oil/gas production.

Abstract

A novel method of measuring steady-state relative permeability, called the intercept method (IM), was recently introduced. The IM entails a modification of a standard steady-state procedure that incorporates multiple total flow rates at each fractional flow rate. The objective of the method is to measure data at each fractional flow rate that will permit simple analytical calculations to correct differential pressure (hence relative permeability) and saturation data for the effects of capillary pressure. The IM is intended to provide a corrective technique without the need for additional supportive analyses, such as capillary pressure and in-situ saturation monitoring (ISSM), or as an alternative approach to the current considered best practice of numerical coreflood simulation, which generally requires the specified additional data.

Consequently, the IM is of interest to the global industry in regions and/or laboratories that do not possess state-of-the-art equipment, or for its cost-saving potential. However, before employing this new method, it was important to the authors to investigate its validity across a wider range of rock properties, sample dimensions and wetting states experienced in commercial special core analysis laboratory (SCAL) coreflood experiments. This study thus draws on a variety of relative permeability curves (and supporting data) from various global core studies, originally derived by typical relative permeability methods plus coreflood simulation. From these data, we use SCORES (an open-source coreflood simulation software) to simulate the expected results of multiflow-rate steady-state experiments and use the IM to derive and compare the corrected relative permeability curves. Results highlight criteria under which the method does not provide fully corrected data. The paper explores these criteria in more detail.