Investigating the Effect of Capillary Number on Performance Prediction of an Iranian Fractured Gas Condensate Reservoir

Abstract

Gas condensate reservoirs are one of the most complicated reservoirs in which the special thermodynamic behavior of reservoir fluid leads to condensate buildup instead of gas expansion, when the reservoir pressure drops below dew point pressure. To justify the phase behavior of such reservoirs, several models have been proposed. One of the models is a capillary number model that has a considerable effect on the shape of relative permeability curves. Taking account of capillary number is shown to improve the performance prediction of gas condensate reservoirs that otherwise is poorly predicted. In pressures below dew point pressure, velocity and surface tension between gas and oil increases more rapidly in the vicinity of the well compared with other parts of the reservoir, which results in condensate saturation reduction and gas relative permeability improvement. The authors model a fractured gas condensate reservoir with and without taking capillary number into consideration; the performance prediction results are compared to the actual results. The model with capillary number included is shown to be able to predict the performance with a greater accuracy than the case without capillary number.