A New Approach in Pressure Transient Analysis: Using Numerical Density Derivatives to Improve Diagnosis of Flow Regimes and Estimation of Reservoir Properties for Multiple Phase Flow
This paper presents the numerical density derivative approach (another phase of numerical welltesting) in which each fluid’s densities around the wellbore are measured and used to generate pressure equivalent for each phase using simplified pressure-density correlation, as well as new statistical derivative methods to determine each fluid phase’s permeabilities, and the average effective permeability for the system with a new empirical model. Also density related radial flow equations for each fluid phase are derived and semilog specialised plot of density versus Horner time is used to estimate k relative to each phase. Results from 2 examples of oil and gas condensate reservoirs show that the derivatives of the fluid phase pressure-densities equivalent display the same wellbore and reservoir fingerprint as the conventional bottom-hole pressure BPR method. It also indicates that the average effective kave ranges between 43 and 57 mD for scenarios (a) to (d) in Example 1.0 and 404 mD for scenarios (a) to (b) in Example 2.0 using the new fluid phase empirical model for K estimation. This is within the k value used in the simulation model and likewise that estimated from the conventional BPR method. Results also discovered that in all six scenarios investigated, the heavier fluid such as water and the weighted average pressure-density equivalent of all fluid gives exact effective k as the conventional BPR method. This approach provides an estimate of the possible fluid phase permeabilities and the % of each phase contribution to flow at a given point. Hence, at several dp' stabilisation points, the relative k can be generated.