Impact of Oil-Water Relative Permeability Curves on SAGD Behaviour

Author(s):  
Qiaohui Lei ◽  
Jing Yi Jacky Wang ◽  
Ian Donald Gates
2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-185
Author(s):  
Yang Manping ◽  
Xi Wancheng ◽  
Zhao Xiaojing ◽  
Cheng Yanhong

Oil-water relative permeability curves are the characteristic curves of evaluating the oil-water infiltrating fluid and also are an important part of reservoir engineering studies. Through a large number of core flooding experiments, based on the establishment of oil-water relative permeability calculation models, the use of the function of the relative permeability curves divided these into the water phase concave, water phase convex and a water phase linear categories. The relationship between different types of relative permeability curves with reservoir characteristics, moisture content, common infiltration points, common permeation range and oil displacement efficiency have been evaluated. Analysis the distribution of the reservoir usable remaining oil and reservoir irreducible oil of different types of relative permeability curves.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 5125
Author(s):  
Qiong Wang ◽  
Xiuwei Liu ◽  
Lixin Meng ◽  
Ruizhong Jiang ◽  
Haijun Fan

It is well acknowledged that due to the polymer component, the oil–water relative permeability curve in polymer flooding is different from the curve in waterflooding. As the viscoelastic properties and the trapping number are presented for modifying the oil–water relative permeability curve, the integration of these two factors for the convenience of simulation processes has become a key issue. In this paper, an interpolation factor Ω that depends on the normalized polymer concentration is firstly proposed for simplification. Then, the numerical calculations in the self-developed simulator are performed to discuss the effects of the interpolation factor on the well performances and the applications in field history matching. The results indicate that compared with the results of the commercial simulator, the simulation with the interpolation factor Ω could more accurately describe the effect of the injected polymer solution in controlling water production, and more efficiently simplify the combination of factors on relative permeability curves in polymer flooding. Additionally, for polymer flooding history matching, the interpolation factor Ω is set as an adjustment parameter based on core flooding results to dynamically consider the change of the relative permeability curves, and has been successfully applied in the water cut matching of the two wells in Y oilfield. This investigation provides an efficient method to evaluate the seepage behavior variation of polymer flooding.


1982 ◽  
Vol 22 (03) ◽  
pp. 371-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jude O. Amaefule ◽  
Lyman L. Handy

Abstract Relative permeabilities of systems containing low- tension additives are needed to develop mechanistic insights as to how injected aqueous chemicals affect fluid distribution and flow behavior. This paper presents results of an experimental investigation of the effect of low interfacial tensions (IFT's) on relative oil/water permeabilities of consolidated porous media. The steady- and unsteady-state displacement methods were used to generate relative permeability curves. Aqueous low-concentration surfactant systems were used to vary IFT levels. Empirical correlations were developed that relate the imbibition relative permeabilities, apparent viscosity, residual oil, and water saturations to the interfacial tension through the capillary number (Nc=v mu / sigma). They require two empirical, experimentally generated coefficients. The experimental results show that the relative oil/water permeabilities at any given saturation are affected substantially by IFT values lower than 10-1 mN/m. Relative oil/water permeabilities increased with decreasing IFT (increasing N ). The residual oil and residual water saturations (S, and S) decreased, while the total relative mobilities increased with decreasing IFT. The correlations predict values of relative oil/water permeability ratios, fractional flow, and residual saturations that agree with our experimental data. Apparent mobility design viscosities decreased exponentially with the capillary number. The results of this study can be used with simulators to predict process performance and efficiency for enhanced oil-recovery projects in which chemicals are considered for use either as waterflood or steamflood additives. However, the combined effect of decreased interfacial tension and increased temperature on relative permeabilities has not yet been studied. Introduction Oil displacement with an aqueous low-concentration surfactant solution is primarily dependent on the effectiveness of the solutions in reducing the IFT between the aqueous phase and the reservoir oil. With the attainment of ultralow IFT's (10 mN/m) and with adequate mobility controls, all the oil contacted can conceivably be displaced. When the interfacial tension is reduced to near zero values, the process tends to approach miscible displacement. However, most high-concentration soluble oil systems revert to immiscible displacement processes as the injected chemical traverses the reservoir. This is a result of the continual depletion of the surfactant by adsorption on the rock and by precipitation with divalent cations in the reservoir brine. The mechanism by which residual oil is mobilized by low-tension displacing fluids cannot be explained solely by the application of Darcy's law to both the aqueous and the oleic phases. On the other hand, in those reservoir regions in which water and oil are flowing concurrently as continuous phases, Darcy's law would be expected to apply and the relative permeability concept would be valid. If a low-tension aqueous phase were to invade a region in which the oil had not as yet been reduced to a discontinuous irreducible saturation, one would expect, also, that the relative permeability concept would be applicable. Under circumstances for which these conditions apply, relative permeabilities at low interfacial tensions would be required, The effect of IFT's on relative permeability curves has received limited treatment in the petroleum literature. Leverett reported a small but definite tendency for a water/oil system in unconsolidated rocks to exhibit 20 to 30% higher relative permeabilities if the IFT was decreased from 24 to 5 mN/m. Mungan studied interfacial effects on oil displacement in Teflons cores. The interfacial tension values varied from 5 to 40 mN/m. SPEJ P. 371^


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Imran

This study investigates a hybrid SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) process utilizing four gaseous solvents, namely, carbon dioxide, propane, nitrogen and methane that are co-injected with steam at different concentrations of 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0 wt%. The objectives are to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of non-condensable gases like methane, nitrogen and carbon dioxide with those of condensable hydrocarbons like propane; to evaluate the performance of hybrid SAGD applied to depleted, low-pressure oil reservoirs; and to numerically simulate the experimental results and obtain tuned relative permeability curves. For this purpose, rigorous experimentation is done using a laboratory-scale, cylindrical replica (i.e., physical model) of an oil reservoir with a set of parallel horizontal injection and production wells. A numerical process model is developed, simulated, and calibrated with the help of experimental data. The experimental setup incorporates i) an injection system designed to co-inject solvent and steam at the required injection temperature of 195°C and pressure of 1.45 MPa, gauge; ii) a production system designed to collect the produced fluids and measure the fractional flow of each phase while ensuring smooth operation with minimal variations in production pressure; and iii) control systems designed to precisely control the heaters temperatures. The experiments are performed at isothermal conditions with model permeability and porosity, respectively, 10.7 Darcy and 32%. It is observed that for low pressure reservoirs, oil recoveries with co-injected solvents are at least 18% more than that from steam alone. On an equal-weight-percentage basis, methane is found to be the best solvent, and results in the highest oil recovery of 50.7% of the original oil in place. Compared to non-condensable gases, propane has the highest solvent retention of up to 15%. The gases with higher solubility in heavy oil, like carbon dioxide and propane, show a reduction in oil recovery with an increase in feed solvent concentration. A numerical model of the process is developed and simulated using Computer Modelling Group’s (CMG) WinProp and STARS simulators. For the solvents that are found to be promising, the simulated oil, water and gas recoveries are history-matched with their experimental counterparts by adjusting the relative permeability curves. The resulting, calibrated model is able to predict oil, water and gas recovery in the hybrid SAGD process with less than 5% relative error.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 219-226
Author(s):  
Haixia Hu ◽  
Wei Luo ◽  
Qinghua Wang ◽  
Junzheng Yang ◽  
Xiaoyan Zhang ◽  
...  

The oil-water and gas-water relative permeability curves are important reference data for the dynamic analysis and numerical simulation of oil and gas reservoir exploitation. Although the petroleum industry of China and other countries have formulated reference standards for the measuring methods of relative permeability of cores, they haven’t given the definite reference values of the core length, therefore we cannot know for sure whether different core length values are required in the measurement and whether the core length has an impact on the measurement results. In view of this gap, this paper conducted a research on the relative permeability of cores with different lengths. The core samples are artificial core with similar properties as the outcrop cores of the Halfaya Oilfield (Iraq), in our experiment, the oil-water and gas-water relative permeability curves of the sample cores were measured and the results suggest that, for the oil-water relative permeability curves, as the core length grows, the iso-permeability points move to the right, and they basically stabilize when the core length is greater than 20cm; as for gas-water relative permeability curves, in case of low-permeability cores, under constant injection pressure, as the core length grows, the iso-permeability points and the two-phase co-permeation areas present an obvious tendency of moving to the left, but when the core length is greater than 20cm, such tendency is not obvious, and the high-permeability cores do not have such characteristics. These results indicate that, the unsteady-state two-phase relative permeability measurement experiments obtained accurate results at a core length of about 20cm, which provided a reference for similar experiments in subsequent research.


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