Abstract
Overpressure gas reservoirs with close-boundary typically have downward curving in p/z plot. The overestimations of original gas in place (OGIP) caused by incorrect extrapolations of early production data are often observed in reserve evaluation. To eliminate this error, a comprehensive compressibility term that includes the rock compressibility, water compressibility, and gas solubility in water has been introduced into the p/z plot.
To satisfy the above objective, it's critical to obtain the right average reservoir pressure corresponding to the drained gas reserve at the time point. But for overpressure gas reservoirs, if we completely ignore the permeability changes as the reservoir pressure declines, the reservoir performance cannot be representative. Another substantial deficiency of the conventional method is that the solution gas in connate water is also habitually neglected in estimating the OGIP. As a result, the contribution of solution gas to the total gas production is omitted in the material balance equation (MBE). These lead to the inaccurate estimation of the OGIP and gas reserve.
Considering the permeability is not constant throughout the reservoir life, but a function of pressure, rock and fluid properties, production volume, and original pore volume, a new form of MBE is presented by this study. It includes the effects of the permeability change due to pore compaction and the contribution of solution gas in connate water to the total gas production. With the proposed semi-analytical equations, the average reservoir pressure and reservoir deliverability can be estimated accurately. Therefore the evaluations of OOIP and recoverable gas are more reliable.
