Contributions to improve the recovery design of Naturally Fractured Reservoirs with Active Aquifers

A naturally fractured reservoir can be defined as a reservoir that contains fractures (planar discontinuities) created by natural processes like diastrophism and volume shrinkage, distributed as a consistent connected network throughout the reservoir. Fractured petroleum reservoirs represent over 20% of the world's oil and gas reserves , but are however among the most complicated class of reservoirs to produce efficiently. It is undeniable that reservoir characterization, modeling and simulation of naturally fractured reservoirs present unique challenges that differentiate them from conventional, single porosity reservoirs. Not only do the intrinsic characteristics of the fractures, as well as the matrix, have to be characterized, but the interaction between matrix and fractures must also be modeled accurately. Further, most of the major naturally fractured reservoirs have active aquifers associated with them, or would eventually resort to some kind of secondary recovery process such as waterflooding, implying that it is essential to have a good understanding of the physics of multiphase flow for such reservoirs. This complexity of naturally fractured reservoirs necessitates the need for their accurate representation from a modeling and simulation perspective, such that production and recovery from such reservoirs be maximized. Imaging log, sonic log, optical microscopy, NMR, MRI, and tomography have greatly enhanced the possibility of measuring fracture geometric characteristics. Different analytical approaches, accounting for mud losses recorded with electromagnetic flowmeters, were developed. This thesis present in the beginning two methods, San Filippo and Lietard, which proved to be very effective tools in determining the fracture hydraulic width and permeability. Estimating reserves and predicting production in naturally fractured reservoirs is a difficult task.

One unique feature of naturally fractured reservoirs developed by water encroachment from aquifer or waterflooding is that incremental oil production by infill drilling wells is very little. This implies that the dominant driving force in water advancement is capillary pressure. Including capillary pressure under this circumstances is a must. A model using capillary pressure and relative permeabilities is presented in this work revealing a linear relationship between the oil production rate and the reciprocal of oil recovery or the accumulate production. In addition, it is presented a material balance equation for naturally fractured reservoirs that considers an initially black oil fluid in a porous medium composed of interdependent matrix and fracture systems. The equation leads to an improved method of modeling naturally fractured reservoirs by considering the compressibility difference between fracture and matrix systems. Modeling separate estimates of oil accumulation have significant economic implications. Poor fracture-matrix communication will give initially high oil rates that drop quickly because oil is basically produced from the fracture network. Pore pressure reduction due to production will tend to close fractures leaving behind considerable oil reserves in the matrix system. Through this work, an attempt has been made to improve our understanding of the flow behavior of naturally fractured reservoirs. The results derived and insights gained help us to draw a few significant conclusions. First, it is seen that although the form of the existing transfer function is correct for single-phase flow, most of the existing shape factors are only valid for parallelepiped matrix blocks and pseudo-steady state flow. It is shown that this might not always be a good approximation for certain naturally fractured reservoirs, where transient flow and the non-orthogonally effects are dominant. The effect of transient flow and non-orthogonally of the fracture system was verified mathematically. It was seen that a time dependent shape factor is required to model transient flow.

It is also acknowledged that the rate of mass transfer can vary quite significantly as a function of the non-orthogonally or the fracture system. With these in mind, a general numerical technique to calculate the shape factor for any arbitrary shape of the matrix (i.e. non-orthogonal fractures) is proposed. This technique also accounts for both transient and pseudo-steady state pressure behavior. The results were verified against fine-grid single porosity models and were found to be in excellent agreement. Second, mechanisms for two-phase mass transfer are studied and it is shown that fluid expansion and imbibition are the main driving forces governing dual porosity mass transfer. However, the existing multiphase transfer function is a direct generalization of the single-phase transfer function, and since the only mechanism governing single-phase flow is fluid expansion, this generalization is not accurate. That is why a modified transfer function is derived that accurately accounts for fluid expansion and imbibition. The new transfer function separates the effects of fluid expansion and imbibition into two different terms. It was seen that the term for fluid expansion is the same as the existing transfer function, and the shape factor derived for fluid expansion is the same as that obtained for single-phase flow. The term for imbibition requires a new shape factor and it is seen that this shape factor is a function of time. It is observed that while prediction of wetting phase imbibition is inaccurate with the existing transfer function, the new transfer function matches fine grid simulations very well, verifying its validity. Third, it is seen that the new transfer function derived for immiscible two-phase flow can be easily generalized to three-phase compositional flow. This is based on the observation that addition of a third phase does not add any new mechanisms governing dual porosity mass transfer. The effect of gravity segregation is also added by assuming that linear superposition of the three mechanisms is applicable. However, the validity of the above assumption is not verified.

Once over all, the present work bring together valuable information regarding the investigation and evaluation of the naturally fractured reservoirs, emphasizing the contribution of different disciplines like geophysics, petrophysics, geology, reservoir and petroleum engineering, the novelty being for reservoir modeling and simulation through a new transfer function which address the multiphase flow for naturally encountered shapes of matrixes.