A practical calculation of the distance to a discontinuity in anisotropic systems from well test interpretation

Abstract

Well testing is the cheapest and most accurate tool available to find the distance from a well to a linear constant-pressure boundary or fault. Several methods exist in the literature with which to determine this parameter. Most of them use conventional analysis and are only useful for isotropic reservoir systems. The few methods for anisotropic systems obtain the well-to-discontinuity distance through conventional analysis, type-curve matching and TDS technique, and then a correction by anisotropic effects is applied. In this work, a unified behavior of the pressure derivative was found, so the new shorter and most practical expressions used to find the distance from the well to the discontinuity, including the simultaneous effects of anisotropy angle and anisotropy index, are included. These new formulae were successfully tested with two synthetic examples and one field case example, and deviation errors higher than 30% are observed if an anisotropic system is treated as an isotropic one.