Impact of Porous Media on Saturation Pressures of Gas and Oil in Tight Reservoirs

Abstract

Abstract The tremendous efforts have been made by the industry in tapping the recoverable resources from the unconventional reservoirs in the past ten years. Shale (tight) gas and shale (tight) oil are the two typical ones. Some research studies focused on the effect of porous media on the dew point of gas condensates in terms of experimental and theoretical work. The contradictory conclusions were reached. On the other hand, some conclusions were made for crude oil as well on the basis of the measurements of the bubble point pressure of crude oil in porous media. Therefore, it is of great importance to develop an effective method to predict the phase behavior of shale gas and shale oil in porous media and investigate the effects of some factors on the saturation pressures of gas condensate and crude oil in tight reservoirs. In this paper, a general framework of theoretical models has been developed to predict the saturation pressures of shale gas and shale oil in tight reservoirs. The Laplace equation is used to relate to the pressures in vapor and liquid phases from the curved interface. The Parachor model is applied to determine the interfacial tensions of crude oil and gas condensate. By taking into account of porous media in the proposed models, the calculations have been performed in some case studies. The effect tendency of some properties of porous media such as permeability and porosity on the dew or bubble point of reservoir fluid is discussed in this paper.