Reservoir Characterization Notes

1) What are sedimentary basins?

Sedimentary basins are those areas of the world where subsidence of the Earth’s crust has
allowed the accumulation of thick sequences of sedimentary rocks.
2) Talk about the Sedimentation and Deformation Process.
There are two different types of deformation and sedimentation processes. These are the
irregular and angular unconformity.
Irregular Unconformity:

1) Sediments are deposited under the sea bed.

2) Uplift caused by the tectonic forces leaves the sediments exposed to erosion.
3) Seediments in the Top structure has been taken away because of the erosion.
4) The Subsidence below the sea bed creates a new package with the irregularity of the
previous sediment. The irregularity of the previous package is preserved as an
unconformity

Angular Unconformity: It happens during different time periods.

1) Sediments accumulate in beds under the sea.

2) Tectonic causes Uplift, folding and deformation of the sedimentary layers during
mountain building.
3) Erosion stripped away the tops of the folded layers, leaving an uneven plain with the
folded layers exposed.
4) Subsidence below the sea allows the creation of a new package. Where the new
package and the previous meet is preserved as an angular uncorformity.
3) Sedimentary Rocks.
These are the main types of Rocks used to discover oil and gas deposits.
4) What are Clastic Rocks?
Clastic Rocks are rocks made up of sand-sized, slit-sized or clay sized rocks with other types
of rocks. The clastic rocks that are the most interesting to the petroleum geologist are
classified into three types: sandstone, siltstone, and shale.
5) Talk About Petroleum Reservoir and how they occur
Oil and Gas accumulations are a result from the coincident occurrence of 6 elements:
 Source rocks: is a sedimentary rock that have sufficient organic matter such that when
it is buried and heated it produces petroleum (Oil and Gas).
 Burial Depth-Temperature: Temperature at which oil generates and matures are
between 50-150 C. such high temperatures occur at depth between 2 and 4 km.
 Reservoir Rock: Hydrocarbon Reservoir are Rocks that have sufficient porosity,
permeability and saturation.
 Migration Pathways: Petroleum Migrates from low permeability source rock into high
permeability reservoir rock from which petroleum can be produced.
  Seal Rock: The petroleum fluids will continue to rise under buoyancy until they reach
a seal.
 Trap: is basically the description of the geometry of the sealed petroleum-baring
container.
6) Hydrocarbon Traps. What are they?
These consists of porous reservoir rocks overlain by tight rocks that does not allow oil or gas
to pass.
Traps can be classified into two types:
1) Structural Traps: Are traps that require structural deformation. Among these exist
three types of traps which are:
 Anticlinal Traps: are domes forms by diapirism that may force close in all
directions.
 Salt Domes: Allows Salt to flow because it is lighter than the overlaying rock,
and therefore the salt floats due to buoyancy.
 Fault Traps: This forms part of the structure trapping the oild and hidering its
upward direction.
2) Stratigraphic Trap: which are related to the primary features in the sedimentary
sequences and does not require structural deformation. These are partially wholly due
to facies or unconformities. Among this we can have Lens Trap, Pinch-Out Trap and
unconformity trap.
10) What happens in the Appraisal of the well?
During the appraisal of a well four activities are carry out. These are the following:
 Well Testing (DST): This gives us the type of hydrocarbon in place and whether the
formation capable of producing at what may be judged as a commercial rate.
 Pressure-Depth Relationship: this gives the location of the fluid contacts which are
essential in the estimation of hydrocarbon in place.
 Fluid Sampling: The determination of fluid pressure gradients depends on the
collection of reliable fluid samples and their accurate PVT analylsis in the laboratory.
 Coring: This gives us the permeability distribution across the producing
formations. This dictates the efficiency of the displacement processes.
11) When does the appraisal of a well ends?
When you can perform calculation to evaluate the following:
 Production profiles of oil, gas and water
 Injection profiles of water and/or gas
 Production/injection well requirements
 Surface topsides facilities design.
12) What are the two categories of the core analysis?
1) Routine Core Analisis: Porosity, Permeability and Saturation.
2) Special Tests: Overburdenn Pressure, Surface and interfacial tension, Relative
Permeability, Capillary Pressure and Wettability.
 13) What is porosity?
Porosity is the fluid-storage capacity of a porous medium, which means the part of the rock’s
total volume that is not occupied by solid particles. We can have absolute permeability and
effective permeability. One important application of the effective porosity is its use in
determining the original hydrocarbon volume in place.
Types of porosity:
  Intergranular porosity
  Fracture porosity
  Micro-porosity
  Vugular porosity
  Intragranular porosity
Porosity Measurements:
 Full-DiameterCoreAnalysis: A full-diameter core analysis is used to measure the
porosity of rocks that are distinctly heterogeneous, such as some carbonates, and
fissured, vugular rocks, for which a standard core-plug analyse is unsuitable.
Bulk-Volume Measurements: This technique utilizes the Archimedes’ principle of mass
displacement.
 Grain-Volume Measurements Based on Boyle’s Law: To perform the laboratory
measurement, Helium gas is often used due to its following properties,
 the very small size of helium molecules makes the gas rapidly penetrate small pores,
 helium is an inert gas that and will not be absorbed on the rock surfaces and thus yield
erroneous results.
 Fluid-Summation Method
14) Residual Saturation.
Not all the Oil can be removed during production. Depending on the drive mechanism the Oil
recovery factor may be as low as 5% and rarely higher than 70%. The oil that remains as
residue is called residual oil.
The cores recovered from wells contain residual fluids that are assumed to reflect:
 The fluid saturation at the reservoir conditions.
 The possible alterations due to the drilling-fluid invasion into the core.
 The efficiency of possible oil displacement from the reservoir rock represented by the
core.
The are two common techniques used to determine residual oil and water saturation:
The Dean Stark Method and the Retort Method.
The Advantage of using the Retort Method is that you can do the experiment in a short period
of time usually less than 24 hours. The disadvantage is that the core sample gets destroyed
due to the high temperatures that the sample is exposed therefore no further testing can be
achieved.
The advantage of using the Dean-Stark Method is that its very accurate and the core can be
used for further analysis because the oil and water sample are in the same core. The
disadvantage is that it takes longer to perform the experiment. Here we use a Solvent like
Toluene because the solvent must have a boiling temperature higher than that of water, it
must be immiscible with water and it must also be lighter than water, and toluene satisfies all
of this requirements.
15) Fluids interfaces in the reservoir.
Gas Oil Contact (GOC): is the surface that separates the gas cap zone from oil zone.
Oil water Contact (OWC): is the surface that separates the oil zone and the water zone.
The Free Water Level (FWL): an Imaginary Surface at which the pressure of the oil zone
equals the pressure of the water zone. Is the oil water contact without the presence of the
capillary forces. From a reservoir engineering standpoint, the free water level is defined by
zero capillary pressure.

16) In how many groups are the reservoir fluids classified?

In 3 groups.
 Incompressible fluids: An incompressible fluid is defined as the fluid whose volume
(or density) does not change with pressure, this fluids does not exist, however may be
assumed in some cases to simplify the derivation and the final form of many flow
equations.
 Slightly compressible fluids: exhibit small changes in volume, or density, with
changes in pressure. (i.e. Crude oil and water systems fits into this category)
 Compressible fluids: fluids that experience large changes in volume as a function of
pressure. All gases are considered compressible fluids.

17) What are flow regimes and how many types are there?
When a liquid and a gas flow together is considered as a flow regime. There are three
types of flow regimes that have to recognized to describe the fluid flow behavior and
reservoir pressure distribution in function of time:
 Steady State Flow: The flow regime is identified as a steady-state flow if the pressure
at every location in the reservoir remains constant, i.e., does not change with time.

 Unsteady State Flow: The unsteady state flow (frequently called transient flow) is
defined as the fluid flowing condition at which the rate of change of pressure with
respect to time at any position in the reservoir is not zero or constant.

The transient (unsteady-state) flow is defined as that time period during which the
boundary has no effect on the pressure behaviour in the reservoir and the reservoir
will behave as its infinite in size.
The variables in unsteady state flow additional to those already used for steady state
flow, therefore, become:
Time, t
Porosity, φ
Total compressibility, ct

Basic Transient equations:

Continuity Equation: The continuity equation is essentially a material balance

equation that accounts for every pound mass of fluid produced, injected, or remaining
in the reservoir.

Transport Equation: The continuity equation is combined with the equation for fluid
motion (transport equation) to describe the fluid flow rate “in” and “out” of the
 reservoir. Basically, the transport equation is Darcy’s equation in its generalized
differential form.

Compressibility Equation: The fluid compressibility equation (expressed in terms of

density or volume) is used in formulating the unsteady state equation with the
objective of describing the changes in the fluid volume as a function of pressure.

Initial and Boundary Conditions: There are two boundary conditions and one initial
condition required to complete the formulation and the solution of the transient flow
equation. The two boundary conditions are:
The formation produces at a constant rate into the wellbore.
There is no flow across the outer boundary and the reservoir behaves as if it were
infinite in size, i.e., re = ∞.
The initial condition simply states the reservoir is at a uniform pressure when
production begins, i.e., time = 0.

 Pseudo-Steady State Flow: When the pressure at different locations in the reservoir is
declining linearly as a function of time, i.e., at a constant declining rate, the flowing
condition is characterized as the pseudosteady state flow. It should be pointed out that
the pseudosteady-state flow is commonly referred to as semisteady state flow and
quasisteady state flow.
As soon as the pressure disturbance reaches all drainage boundaries, it ends the
transient (unsteady-state) flow regime. A different flow regime begins that is called
pseudosteady (semisteady) state flow.

18) What are the types of flow in Reservoir Geometry

There are different types of flow geometries:

 Radial flow: fluids move toward the well from all directions and coverage at the
wellbore, the term radial flow is given to characterize the flow of fluid into the
wellbore.
 Linear flow: occur when flow paths are parallel and the fluid flows in a single
direction. The cross-sectional area to flow must be constant.
 Spherical and hemispherical flow: A well with a limited perforated interval could
result in spherical flow: A well that only partially penetrates the pay zone could result
in hemispherical flow.

19) How many numbers of flowing fluids are in the reservoir

there are 3 numbers of flow that could be either single phase flow (Oil, gas or water) two
phase flow (Oil-gas, water-gas, Oil-water) or three phase flow ( oil water gas).

20) What are the Four activities that can occur in reservoir engineering?

Observations-Asumptions-Calculations-develop decisions.

21) What is the filtration theory?

Include the distribution between porosity and permeability, as well as the consideration of
fluid saturation

22) What is saturation?

A fraction of the pore volume that is occupied by a particular Fluid.

23) What is relative permeability?

When two or more fluids flow at the same time, the relative permeability of each phase at a
specific saturation is the ratio of the effective permeability of the phase to the absolute
permeability

There are several important differences between oil-wet and water-wet relative permeability
curves that are generally observed; these are as follows:

 The water saturation at which oil and water permeabilities are equal, that is, the
intersection point of the two curves, will generally be greater than 50% for water-wet
systems and less than 50% for oil-wet systems.
 The relative permeability to water at maximum water saturation (i.e., (1-Sor)), will be
less than 0.3 for water-wet systems and is roughly greater than 0.5 for oil-wet
systems.
 The connate-water saturation for a water-wet system, Swc, is generally greater than
25%, whereas for oil-wet systems it is generally less than 15%.

24) What is overburden Pressure?

A reservoir thousands of feet underground is subjected to an overburden pressure caused by

the weight of the overlying formations.

25) What is effective overburden pressure?

The pressure difference between overburden and internal pore pressure is referred to as the
effective overburden pressure.

During pressure depletion operations, the internal pore pressure decreases and, therefore, the
effective overburden pressure increases. This increase causes the following effects:

 The bulk volume of the reservoir rock is reduced.

 Sand grains within the pore spaces expand.

26) What is compressibility?

Compressibility typically decreases with increasing porosity and effective overburden

pressure.
27) How many types of compressibility are there?

Three.

Rock-matrix compressibility, cr
It’s defined as the fractional change in volume of the solid rock material (grains) with a unit
change in pressure.

Rock-bulk compressibility, cB
It’s defined as the fractional change in volume of the bulk volume of the rock with a unit
change in pressure.

Pore compressibility, cp
The pore compressibility coefficient is defined as the fractional change in pore volume of the
rock with a unit change in pressure

The formation compressibility cf is the term commonly used to describe the total
compressibility of the formation and is set equal to cp

28) What is capillary pressure?

When two immiscible fluids are in contact, a discontinuity in pressure exists between the two
fluids, which depends upon the curvature of the interface separating the fluids. We call this
pressure difference the capillary pressure, pc.

An important application of the concept of capillary pressures pertains to the fluid

distribution in a reservoir prior to its exploitation.

29) What are capillary forces?

The capillary forces in a petroleum reservoir are the result of the combined effect of the
surface and interfacial tensions of the rock and fluids, the pore size and geometry, and the
wetting characteristics of the system.

30) What is the displacement pressure?

There is a finite capillary pressure at 100% water saturation

that is necessary to force the non-wetting phase into a capillary filled with the wetting phase.
This minimum capillary pressure is known as the
displacement pressure, pd.

It can be seen that, for decreases in permeability, there are corresponding increases in
capillary pressure at a constant value of water saturation.

31) What is wettability?

Wettability is defined as the tendency of one fluid to spread on or adhere to a solid surface in
the presence of other immiscible fluids.

Because of the attractive forces, the wetting phase tends to occupy the smaller pores of the
rock and the non-wetting phase occupies the more open channels.

32) What is permeability?

Permeability in a reservoir rock is associated with it’s capacity to transport fluids through a
system of interconnected pores.

There are two types of permeability. Absolute and effective permeability

Absolute permeability could be determined in the laboratory by using inert gas (nitrogen is
frequently used) that fills the porous rock sample completely and limits the possibility of
chemical interaction with the rock material to a minimum. The absolute permeability is a
property of the porous medium and is a measure of the capacity of the medium to transmit
fluids.

When several phases or mixtures of fluids are passing through a rock locally and
simultaneously, each fluid phase will counteract the free flow of the other phase’s and a
reduced phase permeability (relative to absolute) is measured, i.e. effective permeability.

Before permeability can be measured some conditions have to be satisfied:

Horizontal Flow
Laminar Flow
Stationary Flow
100% Fluid saturation
incompressible fluids
No chemical exchange

There are three types of average permeability:

Weighted-average permeability
Harmonic-average permeability
Geometric-average permeability

33) What are surface and interfacial tension?

Two immiscible fluids are in contact.

When these two fluids are liquid and gas, the term surface tension is used to describe the
forces acting on the interface. When the interface is between two liquids, the acting forces are
called interfacial tension.

34) What is the drainage process?

The process of generating the capillary pressure curve by displacing the wetting phase, i.e.,
water, with the non-wetting phase (such as with gas or oil), is called the drainage process.

35) What is the imbibition process?

The other principal flow process of interest involves reversing the drainage process by
displacing the non-wetting phase (such as with oil) with the wetting phase (e.g., water). This
displacing process is termed the imbibition process.

36) What is capillary hysteresis?

The process of saturating and desaturating a core with the non-wetting phase is called
capillary hysteresis.

37) What is the transition zone?

The transition zone is defined as the vertical thickness over which the water saturation ranges
from 100% saturation to irreducible water saturation Swc. There is no abrupt change from
100% water to maximum oil saturation.

The creation of the oil-water transition zone is one of the major effects of capillary forces in a
petroleum reservoir.

38) What is the Klinkerberg effect

Look for slide 47 in the examples (exercise)

Slide 22 in compressibility slides (Exercise)

39) What is the critical Oil Saturation Point?

The non-wetting phase relative permeability curve shows that the non-wetting phase begins
to flow at the relatively low saturation of the non-wetting phase. The saturation of the oil at
this point is called critical oil saturation Soc.

40) What is saturation connate water?

The wetting phase relative permeability curve shows that the wetting phase will cease to flow
at a relatively large saturation. This is because the wetting phase preferentially occupies the
smaller pore spaces, where capillary forces are the greatest. The saturation of the water at this
point is referred to as the irreducible water saturation Swir or connate-water saturation Swi—
both terms are used interchangeably.
41) What are the primary reservoir characteristics that have to be
considered?

Types of fluids in the reservoir

Flow regimes
Reservoir geometry
Number of flowing fluids in the reservoir

42) What is the diffusivity equation and what are the assumptions to use it?

It is necessary to summarize the assumptions and limitations used in developing diffusivity

equation:
Homogeneous and isotropic porous medium
Uniform thickness
Single phase flow
Laminar flow
Rock and fluid properties independent of pressure

Based on the boundary conditions, there are two generalized solutions to the diffusivity
equation:
Constant-terminal-pressure solution
Constant-terminal-rate solution
The constant-terminal-pressure solution is designed to provide the cumulative flow at any
particular time for a reservoir in which the pressure at one boundary of the reservoir is held
constant. This technique is frequently used in water influx calculations in gas and oil
reservoirs.
The constant-terminal-rate solution of the radial diffusivity equation solves for the pressure
change throughout the radial system providing that the flow rate is held constant at one
terminal end of the radial system, i.e., at the producing well. These are two commonly used
forms of the constant-terminal-rate solution:
The Ei-function solution
The dimensionless pressure pD solution

43) What is the wellbore damage?

It is not unusual for materials such as mud filtrate, cement slurry, or clay particles to enter the
formation during drilling, completion, or workover operations and reduce the permeability
around the wellbore.
This effect is commonly referred to as a wellbore damage and the region of altered
permeability is called the skin zone.

Those factors that cause damage to the formation can produce additional localized pressure
drop during flow. This additional pressure drop is commonly referred to as Δpskin (Skin
factor).

The resulting effect of altering the permeability around the well bore is called the skin effect.
(slide 77)
44) What does the principle of superposition states?

the concept of superposition states, “Every flow rate change in a well will result in a pressure
response which is independent of the pressure responses caused by other previous rate
changes.”

45) What is a transient test and what information can you get from it?

A transient test is essentially conducted by creating a pressure disturbance in the reservoir

and recording the pressure response at the wellbore, i.e., bottom-hole flowing pressure Pwf ,
as a function of time.

Pressure transient testing is designed to provide the engineer with quantitative analysis of the
reservoir properties.

Detailed reservoir information is essential to the petroleum engineer in order to analyse the
current behaviour and future performance of the reservoir.

46) What is a draw down test?

A pressure drawdown test is simply a series of bottom-hole pressure measurements made

during a period of flow at constant producing rate.

Usually the well is shut in prior to the flow test for a period of time sufficient to allow the
pressure to equalize throughout the formation, i.e., to reach static pressure.

47) What are the important assumptions in a draw down test?

Very Important Assumptions:

Reservoir: homogeneous, isotropic, horizontal of uniform thickness
Fluid: Single-phase, slightly compressible, constant viscosity and volume formation factor
Flow: constant, laminar flow, no gravity effects

48) How many categories of well test are?

There are two types of well test

1) Stabilized Well Test: Data are acquired when either pressures in the well drainage
area are unchanging (steady-state flow) or are changing linearly with time (pseudo-
steady-state flow) while the well is being flowed at a constant rate.

A stabilised flow test measures bottomhole flowing pressure at one or more surface flow rates
which is called “flow-after-flow test”. In gas wells this procedure is called a “back-pressure
test”.
Isochronal well test” is a test in which a well is shut in long enough before each test-flow
period so that each flow will begin with the same pressure distribution in the reservoir.
 2) Transient Well Test: Data are acquired over a range of time, starting with the instant
the flow rate is changed and continuing for a few minutes to several hours or days.

49) What are the fundamental modes of well testing?

Production Well
Drawdown Test
Build-up Test

Injection Well
Injection Test
Falloff Test

Drawdown and injection tests are conducted with the flowing at a constant rate.

50) What is the wellbore storage effect?

Wellbore storage is caused by movement or expansion/compression of wellbore fluids in

response to change in the wellbore pressure.
The duration of the wellbore storage effect is dependent on the depth of the well and the type
of completion and is greatly prolonged when fluid phase changes occur.

51) Different test types?

1- Drillstem Test (DST)

2- Closed Chamber Test
3- Constant-Pressure Flow Test
4- Exploration Well Test
5- Formation Test
6- Horizontal Well Test: Challenges related to horizontal well testing: Wellbore storage
even for build-up tests conducted with downhole shut-in-Wellbore cross-flow during
build-up test due to the heterogeneity and heel to toe effect.
7- Impulse Test
8- Multi-rate Test
9- Multi-well Interference Test
10- Production Log Test (PLT)
11- Multi-layer Transient Test
12- Pumped Well Test
13- Testing While Perforating
14- Vertical Interference Test

52) What are the pressure gauge characteristics?

1- Range: Pressure gauges are designed to perform up to a certain maximum pressure.

Outside the specified range, the gauge reading may be in error or the gauge may be
destroyed.
 2- Accuracy: It refers to how close the gauge reading is to the actual pressure to be
sensed. Gauges need calibration to maintain accuracy. They can lose calibration while
downhole, particularly when subject to pressure shocks that may be produced by
perforating guns, or even from opening and shutting flow in the well.

3- Resolution: It refers to what minimum change in pressure can be sensed by the gauge.
The variation in the pressure transient response should be large compared to the gauge
resolution.
4- Response Time: It refers to the length of time required for the gauge to indicate the
pressure following a step change. The response time for a gauge may be lengthened
due to temperature sensitivity. Errors in pressure measurement associated with
temperature variation are most evident in gas well transient tests. Temperature errors
affect the early-time response most detrimentally. After 1 hr or so, temperature is
normally stable during testing.

5- Stability: The stability of a gauge is its ability to retain its performance characteristics
over time. A problem associated with gauge stability is the phenomena of gauge drift
which its magnitude can be constant or varied with time. This problem is important
for reservoir limit testing in high-mobility reservoirs. Because early-time pressure
variations are normally well in excess of gauge drift, so the near wellbore
characterisation is not affected by this source of error.

6- Sampling rate

7- Shock resistance

53) What happens in a test design?

Defining the test interval: The first step in test design is to determine what is being tested.
This requires a look at external data about the formation, derived mainly from open hole log
data and completion information.

Test specification:
Test Sequence:

Hardware selection

What is the radius of investigation?

What is water injection?

In the oil industry, waterflooding or water injection is where water is injected into the oil
field, usually to increase pressure and thereby stimulate production.

What is water drive?

In a water drive reservoir, the oil zone is in communication with an aquifer that provides the
bulk of the reservoir's drive energy. As oil is produced, the water in the aquifer expands and
moves into the reservoir, displacing oil.
What is volumetric depletion?
Volumetric Depletion (Tank-Type) Reservoir. In a Volumetric
Depletion Reservoir, the internal energy of the gas is the primary drive mechanism
that moves the gas towards the surface.