Importance of critical point for the phase behavior of a reservoir fluid

Abstract

It is a fundamental assumption behind a cubic equation of state that the phase behavior of a pure component can be expressed in terms of its critical temperature and pressure. This paper shows that the location of the critical point also for multicomponent reservoir fluids influences the phase behavior throughout the gas and liquid region. An equation of state model that matches the critical point and the saturation pressure at the reservoir temperature is likely to provide a good match of the phase behavior of a reservoir fluid at all conditions experienced during oil and gas production. An experimental critical point is seldom available for a reservoir fluid but the critical point can be estimated from correlations in the molar ratio of C7+ and lighter hydrocarbons. When PVT data exists, such estimated critical point can be used as an extra datapoint when assigning critical properties to an equation of state model. This is particularly useful as a constraint when the equation of state is to be used for gas injection enhanced oil recovery calculations. When the available PVT data is limited to a saturation point at the reservoir temperature, a reliable equation of state model can be developed by only tuning to the saturation pressure and the estimated critical point. The presented method is applicable to reservoir oils and gas condensates with a C7+ mole% of at least 10.