In many cases, it is important to predict water production performance of oil
wells early in, or maybe before, their production life. In as much as oil field water is
important for pressure maintenance purposes and displacement of oil towards the
perforation of the producing well, excessive water production leads to increased cost. In
the case when no provision is made, it represents a significant liability. The case
considered here is a well producing from a monocline with an edge-water aquifer.
Although such problems can be computed with reservoir simulation, the objective of this
work was to develop an empirical method of making water production predictions.
The reservoir model was described as a single well producing from the top of a
monocline drainage block with water drive from an infinite-acting aquifer. During the
reservoir simulation runs, water would cusp and cone into the well, increasing water
production and decreasing oil production. A number of simulation runs were made,
varying eleven model variables. Typical model variables include dip angle, formation
thickness and production rate. For each run a modified Addington-style plot was made. The relationship between each model parameter and three graphical variables was used
to develop the set of empirical correlations. The empirical correlations developed were
integrated with some derived equations that relate important reservoir parameters and
incorporated into a computer program.
The developed correlations and program can be used to carry out sensitivity
analysis to evaluate various scenarios at the early planning stages when available
reservoir data are limited. This gives a quick and easy method for forecasting production
performance with an active edge-water drive. Furthermore, the approach developed in
the research can be applied to other water production problems in other fields/reservoirs.
The developed program was validated and used to evaluate synthetic and field cases.
Overall, a good match was achieved.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/85948 |
| Date | 10 October 2008 |
| Creators | Ayeni, Kolawole Babajide |
| Contributors | Wattenbarger, Robert A. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, born digital |
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