Effect of Reservoir Fluid and Rock Characteristics on Production Histories of Gas-drive Reservoirs

Abstract

Abstract Theoretical calculations have been made on the performance to be expected of gas-drive reservoirs for various characteristics of the oil and gas and the producing rock. Such performance has been expressed graphically as curves for the reservoir pressure and gas-oil ratios of the production as functions of the cumulative oil recovery. The latter has been expressed in terms of percentage of pore space of the reservoir rock. Such curves automatically give values for the ultimate physical recovery, if the latter is interpreted as the recovery obtained when the reservoir pressure has declined to atmospheric, or to any other pressure chosen as defining the state of practical complete depletion. Calculations of these pressure and gas-oil ratio histories have been made for conditions in which the oil viscosity, the gas solubility and shrinkage, the size of an overlying gas cap, if present, the permeability-saturation characteristics of the rock, and the amount of connate water, have been individually varied. The results serve to show the extent to which the ultimate recoveries are sensitive to the important physical parameters characterizing the oil reservoir. As is to be expected, the ultimate recoveries are found to decrease with increasing oil viscosity. Because of the predominant effect of the oil shrinkage associated with the liberation of the gas in solution, the ultimate recovery will decrease with increasing gas solubility. Increasing gas-cap volumes lead to higher recoveries, although the contribution made by the gas-cap gas is small as compared with the oil expulsion by the equivalent amount of solution gas. As a whole, the oil recovery when expressed in percentage of the pore space is not very sensitive to the details of the permeability saturation relationship. However, if the rocks possess an equilibrium free-gas saturation, the rise in gas-oil ratio will be retarded, and the ultimate recovery somewhat increased. The oil shrinkage associated with the liberation of the dissolved gas also leads to the result that as long as the connate water is immobile and the permeability ratio curve for the rock is a function only of the total liquid saturation, the stock-tank oil recovery will be less for a sand containing no connate water than for one with an original water content as high as 30 per cent. The space voidage in the former case will be somewhat greater, but the effect of oil shrinkage will lead to smaller values for the equivalent stock-tank recovery. These calculations also give data showing how the productivity indexes for the producing wells will vary during the reservoir history. Because of decreasing permeability to the oil and increasing oil viscosity, the productivity index will fall continuously as production proceeds, and may finally reach values as low as 10 per cent of the initial productivity index. Introduction In a previous paper was developed the basic theory for the prediction of the production histories of gas-drive reservoirs. T.P. 1917