|Publication number||US7689397 B2|
|Application number||US 11/543,532|
|Publication date||30 Mar 2010|
|Priority date||23 Nov 2002|
|Also published as||CA2624766A1, CA2624766C, CN101405736A, CN101405736B, EP1934847A1, US8249842, US20070061087, US20090150127, WO2007142670A1|
|Publication number||11543532, 543532, US 7689397 B2, US 7689397B2, US-B2-7689397, US7689397 B2, US7689397B2|
|Inventors||Kassem Ghorayeb, Jonathan Holmes|
|Original Assignee||Schlumberger Technology Corporation|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (15), Non-Patent Citations (5), Referenced by (2), Classifications (6), Legal Events (2)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/724,148, filed Oct. 6, 2005, and is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/586,283, which was the National Stage of International Application No. PCT/US02/37658, filed Nov. 23, 2002.
The subject matter of this specification relates to a method, including an associated system or apparatus and computer program and program storage device, for Black Oil Delumping that is used to convert wellstreams from a black oil simulation into their constituent components when a compositional representation of the wellstreams is required.
Black oil reservoir simulation still has wide application in the petroleum industry because it is computationally far less demanding than compositional simulation. However, a principal limitation of black oil reservoir simulation is that it does not provide detailed compositional information necessary for surface process modeling. Black oil delumping overcomes this limitation by converting a black oil wellstream into a compositional wellstream thereby enabling the composition and component molar rates of a production well in a black oil reservoir simulation to be reconstituted. This specification discloses a comprehensive black oil delumping method based primarily on the compositional information generated in a depletion process that is used initially to provide data for the black oil simulation in a typical workflow. Examples disclosed in this specification show the accuracy of this method in different depletion processes including: natural depletion, water injection, and gas injection. The specification also presents a technique for accurately applying the black oil delumping method to wells encountering crossflow.
One aspect of the present invention involves a method for black oil delumping, comprising: converting a black oil wellstream into a compositional wellstream thereby enabling a set of composition and component molar rates of a production well in a black oil reservoir simulation to be reconstituted.
Another aspect of the present invention involves a program storage device readable by a machine tangibly embodying a set of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for black oil delumping, the method steps comprising: converting a black oil wellstream into a compositional wellstream thereby enabling a set of composition and component molar rates of a production well in a black oil reservoir simulation to be reconstituted.
Another aspect of the present invention involves a system adapted for black oil delumping, comprising: first apparatus adapted for converting a black oil wellstream into a compositional wellstream thereby enabling a set of composition and component molar rates of a production well in a black oil reservoir simulation to be reconstituted.
Another aspect of the present invention involves a computer program adapted to be executed by a processor, the computer program, when executed by the processor, conducting a process for black oil delumping, the process comprising: converting a black oil wellstream into a compositional wellstream thereby enabling a set of composition and component molar rates of a production well in a black oil reservoir simulation to be reconstituted.
Further scope of applicability will become apparent from the detailed description presented hereinafter. It should be understood, however, that the detailed description and the specific examples set forth below are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the ‘Black Oil Delumping’ method, as described and claimed in this specification, will become obvious to one skilled in the art from a reading of the following detailed description.
A full understanding will be obtained from the detailed description presented hereinbelow, and the accompanying drawings which are given by way of illustration only and are not intended to be limitative to any extent, and wherein:
The ‘Controller’ 10 is a ‘Field Management’ system, and its task is to apply time-dependent controls and operations on the production and injection wells in one or more reservoir simulation models. In addition to the reservoir simulation models, the controller 10 may also communicate with one or more surface facility models 14 (such as a pipeline network model), since conditions on this part of the integrated system may feed back as constraints on the wells in the reservoir simulation models 16. One way that the controller 10 communicates with the other software applications is detailed in the International Publication number WO2004/049216 A1 referenced above.
The ‘Black Oil Delumping Software’ 20 of
As noted above, the controller 10 of
In the following paragraphs of this specification, the ‘Black Oil Delumping software’ 20 of
A ‘Black Oil Delumping method’ converts a ‘black oil wellstream’ into a ‘compositional wellstream’ thereby enabling the composition and component molar rates of a production well in a black oil reservoir simulation to be reconstituted. The ‘black oil delumping method’ is based primarily on compositional information generated in a depletion process that is used initially to provide data for a black oil simulation in a typical workflow. Examples show the accuracy of this black oil delumping method in different depletion processes, such as natural depletion, water injection, and gas injection. In addition, a method for accurately applying the black oil delumping method to wells encountering crossflow is also disclosed.
With advances in computing speed, it is becoming more usual to employ a fully compositional fluid description in hydrocarbon reservoir simulation. However, the faster computers become, the stronger is simulation engineers' tendency to build more challenging, and thus more CPU intensive, models. Compositional simulation in today's multi-million-cell models is still practically unfeasible.
Black oil fluid representation is a proven technique that continues to find wide application in reservoir simulation. However, an important limitation of black oil reservoir simulation is the lack of detailed compositional information necessary for surface process modeling. The ‘black-oil delumping’ technique described in this specification provides the needed compositional information, yet adds negligible computational time to the simulation.
Delumping a black oil wellstream consists of retrieving the detailed components' molar rates to convert the ‘black oil wellstream’ into a ‘compositional wellstream’. It reconstitutes the composition and component molar rates of the production stream.
Black oil delumping can be achieved with differing degrees of accuracy by using options ranging from setting constant oil and gas composition for the whole run to using the results of a depletion process (CVD, CCD, DL, . . . ).
The simplest method is to assign a fixed composition (component mole fraction) to stock-tank oil and gas. This could be applied over the whole reservoir or, if the hydrocarbon mixture properties vary across the reservoir, different oil and gas compositions can be reassigned at any time during the run.
Some black oil simulators have an API tracking feature that allows oils of different properties to mix within the reservoir. The PVT properties of the oil mixture are parameterized using the oil surface density. To provide a delumping option compatible with the API tracking, stock-tank oil and gas compositions may be tabulated against the density of oil at surface conditions.
The third option, which offers the greatest accuracy, is to provide tables of reservoir liquid and vapor component mole fractions vs. saturation pressure. These can be obtained from a depletion process, ideally the same process that was initially used to generate the black oil PVT tables. This technique, as we show in this specification, provides very accurate results in natural depletion processes and production processes involving reservoir re-pressurization by water-injection. Weisenbom and Schulte1 (see references below) reported a similar delumping technique. However, they used the grid-block pressure instead of saturation pressure (or averaged saturation pressure in the case of a well-completion spanning multiple grid-cell connections) in the delumping scheme. The latter, as we will show, provides better results in the case of production processes involving reservoir re-pressurization by water injection.
Black oil delumping based on composition vs. saturation pressure tables may not provide an accurate wellstream composition in production processes involving gas injection. This is the case when the depletion experiment, and consequently the resulting tabulated vapour and liquid composition vs. saturation pressure, may not adequately account for the proportion and composition of injected gas in the wellstream. In this situation, using tables of liquid and vapor composition vs. the liquid phase's gas/oil ratio (Rs) and/or the vapor phase's oil/gas ratio (Rv) for the delumping process improves accuracy, as we illustrate.
Another important aspect of black oil delumping is the level at which delumping takes place: the well level or the completion level.
Delumping at the completion level could be necessary in the case of reservoirs with multiple PVT description regions, because different completions in the same well may be located in different PVT regions. This will be discussed later in this specification.
Finally, special care should be taken in the case of production wells experiencing crossflow, where some of the fluid mixture in the wellbore is re-injected into low-pressure layers. The “injection” rate in these completions should be accounted for appropriately as described later.
The following formulation applies to black oil delumping both at the well level and well-completion level. Here we describe delumping methods that use one of the following tables:
The formulation considers the general context of a live-oil/wet-gas black oil model. Black oil delumping for simpler black oil models (i.e. live-oil/dry-gas and dead-oil/dry-gas models) is a particular case of this general formulation.
The purpose of the delumping process is to retrieve the component mole fraction (total composition) zi, i=1, . . . , Nc, where Nc is the number of components. The component molar rate ni, i=1, . . . , Nc is then simply the product of the total molar rate multiplied by the component's mole fraction. In the following calculations, liquid and vapor refer to the hydrocarbon phases existing at reservoir conditions, while oil and gas refer to hydrocarbon phases at stock-tank conditions.
The delumping process comprises the following three steps:
Step 1. Phase Mass Rate Calculation
From mass conservation, the mass rates of the vapor and liquid phases, respectively, are given by:
Q m V =Q m gV +Q m oV, (1)
Q m L =Q m oL +Q m gL, (2)
In Equations (1) and (2), the symbols Qm gV, Qm oV, Qm oL and Qm gL denote the mass rates of the free gas, vaporized oil, liquid oil, and dissolved gas respectively. These quantities can be obtained from:
Q m gV=ρg q gV, (3)
Q m oV=ρo q oV, (4)
Q m oL=ρo q oL, (5)
Q m gL=ρg q gL (6)
In the above, qgV, qoV, qoL, and qgL denote the free-gas, vaporized-oil, liquid-oil, and dissolved-gas surface volume rates respectively; ρg and ρo are the surface gas and oil densities, respectively.
Step 2. Phase Composition Calculation
The phase component mole fraction (vapor and liquid component mole fractions yi and xi, i=1, . . . , Nc) calculation takes place through a table lookup. First, the quantity upon which tables are based is calculated (if needed):
Once this is done, table lookup is performed to obtain the vapor and liquid compositions.
Step 3. Total Composition and Component Molar Rates Calculation
The total composition zi of component i (i=1, . . . , Nc) is related to the vapor and liquid component mole fractions yi and xi, respectively by:
z i =αy i+(1−α)x i, (7)
where α is the vapor fraction defined by:
nV and nL are the total number of moles in the vapor and liquid phases respectively. Equation (8) can be written as:
mV, MV, mL and ML are the mass and molar weight of the vapor and liquid phases respectively. In terms of molar rates, α can be written as:
Qm V and Qm L are calculated as described above. The vapor and liquid molar weights MV, and ML, respectively, are given by:
Knowing the total composition, the vapor (liquid) mass rate of component i, i=1, . . . , Nc is the product of the total vapor (liquid) mass rate multiplied by the component's vapor (liquid) mole fraction yi (xi).
Having calculated the component mole fractions zi, i=1, . . . , Nc, the component molar rates ni, i=1, . . . , Nc are straightforwardly calculated: ni=(nV+nL)zi, i=1, . . . , Nc.
Black Oil Delumping at the Completion Level
A well connects with the simulation grid through a set of grid-cell connections. For the purpose of modeling workover operations, the simulator can lump connections together into completions; all the connections in the same completion are opened or closed together. In the case where crossflow occurs in a production well, some of the connections might be injecting instead of producing. Even within the same completion, some connections might be producing and others might be injecting (especially if connections in different poorly-communicating reservoir layers are lumped into the same completion). A completion in a production well might therefore have an injection rate as well as a production rate. The completion injection rate should thus be accounted for when calculating the production well's component molar rates based on those obtained by delumping each completion's black oil stream into a compositional stream.
Consider a well that has n completions. Generally, some (or all) of the connections in a completion may be injecting due to crossflow. Both oil and gas injection may be taking place in the injecting connections.
In a wet-gas/live-oil black oil model, let qPk gV, qPk oV, qPk oL and qPk gL denote the free-gas, vaporized-oil, liquid-oil and dissolved-gas production surface volume rates, respectively, for completion k. These are the flow rates from the producing connections in the given completion.
Let qP g and qP o denote the “gross” surface volume gas and oil “production rates” of the production well, respectively defined as:
In the following, we assume that qP g and qP o are both >0 (for a production well). Let qIk g and qIk o denote the surface volume gas and oil injection rates of completion k, respectively. These are the flow rates of the injecting connections in the given completion.
Let qI g and qI o denote the surface volume gas and oil “injection rates” of the production well, respectively:
Let qg and qo denote the “net” surface volume gas and oil production rates of the production well. qg and qo are both ≧0 (for a production well).
In a black oil delumping process at the completion level, the completions' production rates should be adjusted to account for the well's injecting connections. The well's injection rates qI g and qI o are apportioned among all producing completions according to their overall production rates.
Let qαk gV, qαk oV, qαk oL and qαk gL denote the adjusted values of qPk gV, qPk oV, qPk oL and qPk gL, respectively. These adjusted values should satisfy:
The following thus apply:
Note that since qg=qP g−qI g is ≧0 in a production well, (1−qI g/qP g) is always ≦1. The same applies for (1−qI o/qP o). This implies that qαk gV, qαk oV, qαk oL and qαk gL are all ≧0.
The ECLIPSE black oil and compositional reservoir simulator is used in this specification. The ‘Eclipse’ simulator is owned and operated by Schlumberger Technology Corporation of Houston, Tex. Black oil delumping in this specification is performed using the Reservoir to Surface Link software, R2SLŽ, which is linked to ECLIPSE through an open interface.2,3 (see references below). The following is a brief description of the procedure it uses to implement black oil wellstream delumping at the well level. The black oil delumping method uses liquid (vapor) composition vs. saturation pressure tables. Similar processes are used for the other delumping methods.
We present a set of examples in which we investigate the accuracy of the delumping technique for a variety of production processes and reservoir behaviors:
The validation process principally involves comparing the well composition over time from a compositional reservoir model with the delumped black oil wellstream from an equivalent black oil model.
In all examples (unless indicated otherwise), the following descriptions apply:
Refer now to
Table 1 shows the set of components/pseudo-components and the fluid compositions used in the following examples. In
This example shows that delumping using composition vs. saturation pressure tables provides highly accurate results in natural depletion processes and production processes involving reservoir re-pressurization using water injection.
Delumping in this example takes place at the well level. We compared these results with those obtained by delumping at the completion level and observed no significant difference. Note that each completion consists of a single grid-cell connection in this example (as is also the case in all other examples).
The initial composition for this example is that of Fluid 1 (see Table 1). The initial pressure in the reservoir is 5000 psi. The entire reservoir is initially in the liquid phase (undersaturated). Oil is produced at a constant total rate of 2500 STB/D through seven wells.
A CVD depletion process was used to build the live-oil/wet-gas black oil model. We also tried using a black oil model containing dry gas (instead of wet gas), but this gave a significant discrepancy in the gas breakthrough time and the composition of the delumped black oil wellstream. This is to be expected, since quality of the delumped results is directly related to quality of the black oil model.
A natural depletion process is applied for the first 3 years. Re-pressurization by water injection, injecting twice the reservoir volume of the produced fluids, is applied over the remaining production time (5 years).
The average reservoir pressure decreases to approximately 4200 psi at the end of the third year and increases back to around 4500 psi (which is above the bubblepoint pressure) at the end of the seventh year, as shown in
This example illustrates the accuracy of the delumping scheme in the case of reservoirs with multiple fluid regions.
Referring to Table 1 set forth below, in the compositional model, fluids 1, 2 and 3 (shown in Table 1) are used to initialize the bottom, middle and top layers of the reservoir respectively. Note that the methane content decreases with depth while the heavy components' and pseudo-components' mole fractions increase with depth. The initial reservoir pressure is 5000 psi, which is slightly higher than the bubblepoint pressure of the liquid in the top of the reservoir.
The equivalent black oil model has three PVT regions corresponding to the fluid regions in the equivalent compositional models.
Black oil delumping takes place at the completion level in this example. Consequently, three different sets of tables are used to delump the black oil stream from well completions belonging to the three different layers of the reservoir. The composition of the delumped wellstream is then calculated as described in the Formulation section.
This example is similar to Example 1, with one major difference: the three layers of the reservoir are initialized with different pressures, causing the wells to crossflow. A natural depletion process is applied during the first three years. A 100% voidage replacement water injection scheme is applied for the remaining production time (5 years).
The initial pressures of the three layers are as follow: 5500 psi (top), 4800 psi (middle), and 6500 psi (bottom). The three layers use, however, the same PVT model: that of Fluid 1 (see
The aim of this example is to discuss issues related to black oil delumping in the presence of gas injection.
The reservoir initial composition corresponding to this example is that of Fluid 1 (see Table 1). Initial pressure in the reservoir is 5500 psi, and the entire reservoir is initially in the liquid phase (undersaturated).
No water injection takes place in this example. An 80% voidage replacement gas-injection scheme is applied from the beginning of the production process. Field production is limited to 10000 RB/D. This rate is apportioned equally among producers (when possible). Unlike the three examples above, no economic limits are applied.
A general conclusion can be drawn from the above examples: the level of agreement between black oil model and its equivalent compositional model, in terms of composition (component molar rates or mole fractions) vs. production time, is proportional to the agreement between the two models in terms of gas (or oil) production vs. time. The higher the quality of the black oil model (compared with the compositional model), the better the agreement between the two models in terms of composition vs. time.
The delumping method presented in this specification uses tables of liquid and vapor composition vs. saturation pressure, which are typically obtained from a depletion process. This method allows us to retrieve the most detailed compositional information possible in a black oil delumping process, provided that the saturation pressure intervals in these tables are the same as those in the black oil PVT tables (obtained, basically, using the same depletion simulation). Having finer pressure intervals than those in the black oil PVT tables does not necessarily result in a better compositional fluid description.
More investigation is needed in the case of production processes involving gas injection in the saturated region. It should be mentioned that black oil modeling might, basically, fail to simulate the process accurately in such configurations.
In the following we summarize the well's average pressure (grid-block equivalent pressure4) calculation.
The inflow performance relationship can be written in terms of the volumetric production rate of each phase at stock tank conditions as:
q j f =T wj M j f(p j −p w −H wj) (25)
By summing up over all the well's Ng grid cells one obtains:
The well's averaged pressure pa is defined by:
The phase with highest mass rate is selected in Eq. 27.
Appendix B—Look-Up Tables for Example 4
Black oil delumping tables for Examples 1, 2 and 3 were automatically generated by the software package used for simulating the black oil model depletion process (CVD). This is not the case for the tables used for black oil delumping in Example 4 (involving gas injection).
In Example 4, a swelling-test experiment simulation is performed to investigate the effect of the injected gas on the fluid behavior. This consists of adding prescribed volumes of gas at given GORI (volume of injection gas at standard conditions per volume of original reservoir fluid at its saturation pressure). Among other information, the experiment provides tabulated liquid composition vs. GORI. The experiment also provides tables of vapor composition (in equilibrium with the liquid) vs. GORI.
Let RS0 denote the gas-oil ratio of the initial mixture (corresponding to zero injected gas). The liquid gas-oil ratio that corresponds to a given added volume of gas can be approximated by the following:
where V0 gL and V0 oL denote the gas and oil volumes resulting from flashing a volume of liquid (with no injected gas) at surface conditions; Vgl is the surface volume of the injected gas.
In Eq. 28, the following is assumed:
Eq. 28 implies:
R S =R S0 +GOR I ×B o, (29)
where Bo is the oil formation volume factor (of the order of 2.1 Rb/STB in Example 4).
Tabulated liquid and vapor composition vs. RS are thus used in the black oil delumping for Example 4.
SI Metric Conversion Factors
(° F. + 459.67)/1.8 = K
Mscf × 3.048*
E+02 = m3
STB × 1.589 873
E−01 = m3
psi × 6.894 757
E+00 = pa
*Conversion factor is exact
Component mole fractions for the three fluids used in the examples.
Rs at Pbub at
The above description of the ‘Black Oil Delumping’ method being thus described, it will be obvious that the same may be varied in many ways. Such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the spirit and scope of the claimed method or apparatus or program storage device, and all such modifications as would be obvious to one skilled in the art are intended to be included within the scope of the following claims.
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|Cooperative Classification||E21B47/10, E21B49/00|
|European Classification||E21B47/10, E21B49/00|
|3 Nov 2006||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION, TEXAS
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:GHORAYEB, KASSEM;HOLMES, JONATHAN;REEL/FRAME:018482/0220;SIGNING DATES FROM 20061028 TO 20061030
Owner name: SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION,TEXAS
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:GHORAYEB, KASSEM;HOLMES, JONATHAN;SIGNING DATES FROM 20061028 TO 20061030;REEL/FRAME:018482/0220
|4 Sep 2013||FPAY||Fee payment|
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