A fast method for trapped gas determination

Abstract

Gas reservoirs are mainly produced by depletion with an aquifer rise; reservoir simulation requires two main SCAL inputs: the amount of trapped gas by the aquifer (residual gas saturation: Sgr) and the relative permeability to water due to aquifer flooding. As it is quasi impossible to predict aquifer strength, the primary SCAL input for reservoir simulation is the Sgr. The recovery factor is directly defined by initial and residual gas saturations. In fact, the residual gas saturation Sgr highly depends on the initial gas saturation Sgi and there is no universal petrophysical parameter governing the shape of this curve. This relationship can be described by several different models (Land, Aissaoui…). While Land’s model is widely used, the Aissaoui model better fits the experimental results (Suzanne et al. 2003), at least for homogeneous sandstones. For a given threshold of initial gas saturation Sg0, this relationship typically exhibits a plateau at high Sgi>Sg0 and an increasing linear trend at low Sgi<Sg0. The challenge here is to properly estimate the value of the Sg0 threshold. Classical laboratory method would require one experiment per point in the Sgr/Sgi plot, and therefore can be achieved in a matter of months. Here we propose a laboratory method allowing the acquisition of the Sgr/Sgi curve in a few days. The proposed method combines centrifugation and capillary rise under imaging. First, the centrifuge allows creating a saturation profile along a sample; measured by NMR. Then, capillary rise is used to capture Sgr under NMR monitoring. By adding NMR imaging, this technique allows combining the benefits of centrifugation to explore a wide range of Sgi; and the ease and cost effectiveness of capillary rise to measure the resulting Sgr. Therefore, at a timescale close to a traditional capillary rise, the proposed technique avoids Land extrapolation and provides a direct measurement of Sgr in a wide range of Sgi. As an additional benefit, the combination of NMR and centrifuge can provide at the same time a direct measurement of capillary pressure, providing information on the gas in place and potential imbibition process in the reservoir.