Abstract
Material balance analysis is a fundamental technique for estimating gas-in-place. It can be achieved using: 1) Static material balance, using static (shut-in) reservoir pressures, where a plot of static p/z versus cumulative gas production is created to estimate original-gas-in-place (OGIP) or 2) Flowing material balance where gas rates and flowing pressures are used to estimate average reservoir pressure.
The flowing material balance concept of Agarwal-Gardner (1999) was extended to dry coalbed methane (CBM) reservoirs by Clarkson et al. (2007a) and Gerami et al. (2007) and to 2-phase (gas and water) CBM wells by Clarkson et al. (2007b). The present study further enhances the flowing material balance for dry CBM reservoirs by presenting a p/z* implementation of the concept.
This application, while accounting for the distinguishing characteristics of a CBM reservoir, uses the industry-standard practice of p/z material balance to calculate original-gas-in-place. As with the Agarwal-Gardner approach, the flowing p/z* method can be applied to variable gas rates and/or flowing pressures conditions.
In the present work, the derivation and iterative procedure of calculations are explained. Several test cases based on dry/immobile water saturation using real and synthetic data were generated. The resulting estimates of OGIP calculated from implementation of flowing p/z* material balance show excellent agreement and the estimated OGIP's are reliable.
