PE 425: RESERVOIR

MODELING AND
SIMULATION

University of
Dodoma

Faustine Kasanda
June 2016

Coning and
Compositional Model
Simulation

Faustine Kasanda

University of

June 2016

Coning Model
Simulation

Coning Model
Simulation

Coning is the mechanism describing the movement of water/gas into

the perforations of oil producing wells.
For water coning, the movement is upwards for the case of bottom

water, side-wards for edge water.

However it is downwards for gas coning.
The production of water from oil wells is a common occurrence which

increases the cost of producing operations and may reduce the

efficiency of the depletion mechanism and the recovery of reserves.

Coning Model Simulation

The coning of water into production wells is caused by pressure gradients
established around the wellbore by the production of fluids from the well.
These pressure gradients can raise the water-oil contact near the well
where the gradients are dominant.
The gravity forces that arise from fluid density differences counterbalance
the flowing pressure gradients and tend to keep the water out of the oil
zone.
Hence, at any given time, there is a balance between the gravitational and
the viscous forces at any point on and away from the completion interval.

Coning Model Simulation

The water cone formed eventually breaks into the well to
produce water along with the oil when the viscous forces
exceed that of the gravitational forces.
This basic visualization of coning can be expanded into three
conceptual cones;a) stable cone,
b) unstable cone and
c) critical production rate.

Coning Model Simulation

STABLE CONE:
If a well is produced at a constant rate and the pressure gradient in
the drainage system is constant, a steady state condition is
reached, if at this condition, the dynamic forces (viscous forces) at
the well are less than the gravity forces.
Then the water or gas cone that has formed will not extend to the
well .
Moreover, the cone will not advance nor recede, thus establishing
what is known as stable cone.

Coning Model Simulation

UNSTABLE CONE:
Conversely, if the pressure in the system is in an unsteady-state condition, then the cone that
will be formed is unstable and it will continue to advance until the steady-state condition takes
over.
If the flowing pressure drop is sufficient to overcome the gravity forces, the unstable cone will
mushroom and ultimately break into the well.
In actual sense therefore, stable cones may only be 'pseudostable' because the drainage
system and the pressure distribution generally change.
For a example, during reservoir depletion, the water- oil contact may advance toward the
completion interval, thereby increasing coning tendencies.
Another one is reduction in productivity due to well damage requires a corresponding
increasing the flowing pressure drop to maintain a given production rate. This increase in
pressure drop may force an otherwise stable cone into the well.

Coning Model Simulation

CRITICAL PRODUCTION RATE:
The critical production rate is the rate beyond and above which the

flowing pressure gradient at the well causes water (or gas) to cone into
the well.
It is therefore, the maximum rate of oil production without concurrent

production of water by coning.

One assumption in critical production rate is that the cone has built-up

to just before the breakthrough into the well.

But, these analyses reveal nothing directly about the time it takes for

the cone to build-up to this breakthrough position.

Coning Model Simulation

CRITICAL PRODUCTION:
Thus, water-free oil can be produced from a well for a prolonged period at
rates above critical rate before the well reaches the condition to which the
critical applies.
Theoretically, the basic coning equation for a water-oil system can be
developed by applying the conservation of mass to each of the phases
relating flow velocities with pressure by Darcy's law, and relating pressure
across water-oil contact interfaces by capillary pressure.
With the usual boundaries at the well and reservoir the solutions of the
resulting equations for the time behavior of a water-oil interface constitutes a
free-surface, boundary value problem.

Coning Model Simulation

Effects of Coning issues
Water coning has been a major hitch that worries reservoir Engineers
since the
inception of the petroleum industry.
It seriously impacts the well productivity and influences the overall
recovery of the oil reservoirs.
It also increases the cost of water handling and disposal,
Promotes corrosive problems in production facilities,
It causes early shut down of the affected wells.

MECHANISM OF WATER CONING

Oil reservoirs with bottom water drive have high oil recovery due to
supplemental energy from the aquifer.
Wells are often penetrated in the top section of the oil formation to
minimize or delay water coning when there is no gas cap in the reservoir.
The main reason of water coning is that, water moves to the direction of
least resistance in the reservoir while balanced by its gravity to keep
equilibrium.
It is obvious that oil production in the well creates a pressure drawdown
which elevates the oil-water contact (OWC) in the immediate vicinity of
the well.

MECHANISM OF WATER CONING

Schematic of water coning in reservoir under aquifer support in horizontal well.

MECHANISM OF WATER CONING

Schematic of water coning in vertical wells

MECHANISM OF WATER CONING

Cone breakthrough time and build up time development
For the advancing cone, distance or height attained by an oil particle moving at the apex is defined
by this equation;

Compositional model
Simulation

Compositional model Simulation

A black oil simulator does not consider changes in composition of the
hydrocarbons as the field is produced.
The compositional model, is a more complex model, where the PVT
properties of oil and gas phases have been fitted to an equation of state
(EOS), as a mixture of components.
The simulator then uses the fitted EOS equation to dynamically track the
movement of both phases and components in field.
The simulation model computes the saturation change of three phases (oil,
water and gas)and pressure of each phase in each cell at each time step.

Compositional model Simulation

As a result of declining pressure as in a reservoir depletion study, gas will
be liberated from the oil. If pressures increase as a result of water or gas
injection, the gas is re-dissolved into the oil phase.
A simulation project of a developed field, usually requires "history
matching" where historical field production and pressures are compared
to calculated values.
The model's parameters are adjusted until a reasonable match is
achieved on a field basis and usually for all wells. Commonly, producing
water cuts or water-oil ratios and gas-oil ratios are matched.

Introduction to Compositional Simulation

Introduction to Compositional
Simulation
So as considering so-called Black Oil models.
These models assume that the hydrocarbons may be described as two

components, oil and gas, and that hydrocarbon fluid composition remain
constant during the simulation.
All fluid properties are assumed to be determined by oil pressure and

bubble point pressure only.

All mass transfer between the two components is normally described by

the solution gas-oil ratio term, Rso (although a oil-in-gas term to handle
condensate may easily be included in the Black Oil formulation).

Introduction to Compositional
Simulation

In reservoirs containing light oil, the hydrocarbon composition as well as

pressures affect fluid properties.
Equilibrium flash calculations using K values or and equation of state (EOS)
must be used to determine hydrocarbon phase compositions.
Compositional simulation is beyond the scope of this course, however, we
will in the following give a short introduction to the subject.
In a compositional model, we in principle make mass balances for each
hydrocarbon component, such as methane, ethane, propane, etc. In practice,
we limit the number of components included, and group components into
pseudo-components.

Introduction to Compositional
Simulation

We still have oil and gas as flowing hydrocarbon phases. In the

following we will for simplicity exclude water, which would have a
form identical to its form in the Black Oil model.
We define

Introduction to Compositional
Simulation

Introduction to Compositional
Simulation

Introduction to Compositional
Simulation
The number of equations that must be solved in compositional simulation
depends on the number of components modeled.
Often, we model the lighter components individually, and group heavier
components into a pseudo-component.
If non-hydrocarbons are involved, these may have to also be modeled separately.
The Black Oil model may be considered to be a pseudo-compositional model with
two components. Again neglecting water, if we define our components as:

Introduction to Compositional
Simulation

Introduction to Compositional Simulation

A black oil simulator does not consider changes in composition of the
hydrocarbons as the field is produced.
The compositional model, is a more complex model, where the PVT
properties of oil and gas phases have been fitted to an equation of state
(EOS), as a mixture of components.
The simulator then uses the fitted EOS equation to dynamically track the
movement of both phases and components in field.
The simulation model computes the saturation change of three phases (oil,
water and gas)and pressure of each phase in each cell at each time step.

Introduction to Compositional Simulation

As a result of declining pressure as in a reservoir depletion study, gas will
be liberated from the oil. If pressures increase as a result of water or gas
injection, the gas is re-dissolved into the oil phase.
A simulation project of a developed field, usually requires "history
matching" where historical field production and pressures are compared
to calculated values.
The model's parameters are adjusted until a reasonable match is
achieved on a field basis and usually for all wells. Commonly, producing
water cuts or water-oil ratios and gas-oil ratios are matched.

Simulation software
Many software, private, open source or commercial, are available for reservoir simulation. The most
well knows (in alphabetical order) are:
Open Source:
BOAST - Black Oil Applied Simulation Tool (Boast) simulator is a free software package for reservoir
simulation available from the U.S. Department of Energy.[1] Boast is an IMPES numerical simulator
(finite-difference implicit pressure-explicit saturation) which finds the pressure distribution for a given
time step first then calculates the saturation distribution for the same time step isothermal. The last
release was in 1986 but it remains as a good simulator for educational purposes.
MRST - The MATLAB Reservoir Simulation Toolbox (MRST) is developed by SINTEF Applied
Matemathics as a MATLAB toolbox. The toolbox consists of two main parts: a core offering basic
functionality and single and two-phase solvers, and a set of add-on modules offering more advanced
models, viewers and solvers. MRST is mainly intended as a toolbox for rapid prototyping and
demonstration of new simulation methods and modeling concepts on unstructured grids. Despite
this, many of the tools are quite efficient and can be applied to surprisingly large and complex
models.
OPM - The Open Porous Media (OPM) initiative provides a set of open-source tools centered around
the simulation of flow and transport of fluids in porous media.

Simulation software
Commercial:
CMG Suite (IMEX, GEM and STARS) - Computer Modelling Group currently offers three
simulators: a black oil simulator, called IMEX, a compositional simulator called GEM and a
thermal and advanced processes simulator called STARS.
Schlumberger ECLIPSE- ECLIPSE is an oil and gas reservoir simulator originally
developed by ECL (Exploration Consultants Limited) and currently owned, developed,
marketed and maintained by SIS (formerly known as GeoQuest), a division of
Schlumberger. The name ECLIPSE originally was an acronym for "ECLs Implicit Program for
Simulation Engineering". Simulators include black oil, compositional, thermal finite-volume,
and streamline simulation. Add-on options include local grid refinements, coalbed methane,
gas field operations, advanced wells, reservoir coupling, and surface networks.
ExcSim, a fully implicit 3-phase 2D black oil reservoir simulator for the Microsoft Excel
platform
Landmark Nexus - Nexus is an oil and gas reservoir simulator originally developed as
'Falcon' by Amoco, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Cray Research. It is currently
owned, developed, marketed and maintained by Landmark Graphics, a product service line
of Halliburton. Nexus will gradually replace VIP, or Desktop VIP, Landmark's earlier
generation of simulator.

Simulation software
Commercial:
Stochastic Simulation ResAssure - ResAssure is a stochastic simulation
software solution, powered by a robust and extremely fast reservoir
simulator.
Rock Flow Dynamics tNavigator supports black oil, compositional and
thermal compositional simulations for workstations and High Performance
Computing clusters
GrailQuest's ReservoirGrail employs a unique patented approach called
Time Dynamic Volumetric Balancing to simulate reservoirs during primary
and secondary recovery.
Gemini Solutions Merlin is a fully implicit 3-Phase finite difference reservoir
simulator originally developed at the Texaco research department and
currently used by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of
Safety and Environmental Enforcement to calculate Worst Case Discharge
rates and burst/collapse pressures on casing shoes and blowout preventers