An Early-Time Model for Drawdown Testing of a Hydrate-Capped Gas Reservoir

Summary Development of natural gas hydrates as an energy resource has gained significant interest during the past decade. Hydrate reservoirs may be found in different geologic settings including deep ocean sediments and arctic areas. Some reservoirs include a free-gas zone beneath the hydrate and such a situation is referred to as a hydrate-capped gas reservoir. Gas production from such a reservoir could result in pressure reduction in the hydrate cap and endothermic decomposition of hydrates. Well testing in conventional reservoirs is used for estimation of reservoir and near-wellbore properties. Drawdown testing in a hydrate-capped gas reservoir needs to account for the effect of gas from decomposing hydrates. This paper presents a 2D (r,z) mathematical model for a constant-rate drawdown test performed in a well completed in the free-gas zone of a hydrate-capped gas reservoir during the earlytime production. Using energy and material balance equations, the effect of endothermic hydrate decomposition appears as an increased compressibility in the resulting governing equation. The solution for the dimensionless wellbore pressure is derived using Laplace and finite Fourier cosine transforms. The solution to the analytical model was compared with a numerical hydrate reservoir simulator across some range of hydrate reservoir parameters. The use of this solution for determination of reservoir properties is demonstrated using a synthetic example. Furthermore, the solution may be used to quantify the contribution of hydrate decomposition on production performance. Introduction In recent years, demands for energy have stimulated the development of unconventional gas resources, which are available in enormous quantities around the world. Gas hydrate as an unconventional gas resource may be found in two geologic settings (Sloan 1991):on land in permafrost regions, andin the ocean sediments of continental margins. During the last decade, extensive efforts consisting of detection of the hydrate-bearing areas, drilling, logging, coring of the intervals, production pilot-testing, and mathematical modeling of hydrate reservoirs have been pursued to evaluate the potential of gas production from these gas-hydrate resources.