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Quantification of filtrate invasion and the consequential interpretation requires the physics of multiphase multicomponent flow. In many instances, wireline sampling, drillstem tests, and others require computation in a multiphase environment for an understanding of reservoir potential. This is because the drilling process uses mud that is immiscible with at least one of the reservoir fluids and that often has different salinity or constituents compared to the reservoir fluid of the same phase. Because drilling is usually overbalanced (reservoir pressure < mud pressure), mud-filtrate leakage into the formation, called invasion, is inevitable and leads to complex saturation and salinity profiles within the formation. For example, with water-based mud within an oil zone, the saturation close to the wellbore is nearly 1 − Sor, whereas the far field is at the connate-water saturation. The precise value of the saturation at the wellbore surface requires an understanding of the capillary pressure (Ramakrishnan et al. 1988) (see Fig. 5.1).

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