Gravity Drainage and Oil Reinfiltration Modeling in Naturally Fractured Reservoir Simulation

Abstract

Abstract The gravity drainage and oil reinfiltration phenomena that occur in the gas cap zone of naturally fractured reservoirs are studied through single porosity refined grid simulations. A stack of initially oil-saturated matrix blocks in presence of connate water surrounded by gas-saturated fractures is considered; gas is provided at the top of the stack at a constant pressure under gravity-capillary dominated flow conditions. An in-house reservoir simulator, SIMPUMA-FRAC, and two other commercial simulators were used to run the numerical experiments; the three simulators gave basically the same results. Gravity drainage and oil reinfiltration rates, along with average fluid saturations, were computed in the stack of matrix blocks through time. Pseudo functions for oil reinfiltration and gravity drainage were developed and considered in a revised formulation of the dual-porosity flow equations used in fractured reservoir simulation. The modified dual-porosity equations were implemented in SIMPUMA-FRAC,1,18 and solutions were verified, with good results, against those obtained from the equivalent single porosity refined grid simulations. Same simulations, considering gravity drainage and oil reinfiltration phenomena, were attempted to run in the two other commercial simulators, in their dual-porosity mode and using available options. Results obtained were different among them and significantly different from those obtained from SIMPUMA-FRAC.