1

CHAPTER 8

EFFECTIVE AND RELATIVE

PERMEABILITY

AZMAN IKHSAN/SKP3323
 Introduction
• Previously, a question was posed on how to estimate the flowrate of a fluid in
a reservoir where other fluids, either flowing or static, were present.

• Obvious, every fluid within the pore space of a porous medium there exists a
critical saturation, irreducible or residual, that cannot be reduced unless
excessively large pressure gradients are applied.

• Under normal reservoir conditions, such gradients cannot be attained, which

makes a fluid near or at its critical saturation virtually immobile.

• Fluid can flow only when its saturation is greater than the critical
value.
This condition is dictated by capillary forces.
 Effective Permeability
• When several fluids are flowing through a porous medium, the flowrate of
each fluid will be governed by Darcy’s law.

• In equation form, Darcy’s law is written:

(1)

Ai = total cross-sectional area (difficult and impractical)

Replacing k with ki, : effective permeability

• The effective permeability is defined as the ability of a porous medium to

conduct that fluid when the fluid’s saturation in the porous medium is less
than 100%, i.e., have more than one fluid in the system.
 (2)

• The units of effective permeability are obviously the same as

permeability.

The effective permeability to the fluid depends on:

-The amount or saturation of that fluid in the porous media
-Saturations of other fluids
-Wettability characteristics of the porous media
-Saturation history
-Pore
(Largercharacteristics
grain size, tend toand
preferentially oil wet. For small grain size, maintaining the water-wet).
size distribution.
 Theory

Concept
If two or more fluid flow through a porous media, each fluid will flow
according to Darcy’s Law.
kw A p
qw 
 L
ko A p
qo 
 L
kg A p
qg 
 L
Saturated with water, oil and gas
• A set of typical water and oil effective permeability curves for a
strongly water-wet rock is shown in Fig. 8.1.
 Measurement of Effective Permeability

• Effective permeability is measured by several methods classified according to the

nature of the flow experiment.

• The steady-state method is simple and accurate, though very time consuming.

• First, both water and oil are simultaneously injected into the core sample at different
flowrates, and, second, the production rates of oil and water are measured
individually

• A test begins with mounting the core sample, whose pore volume is known and is
fully saturated with water, into the core holder.

• Once the confining pressure (minimum 1.5 times of the fluid injection pressure) is
applied, some water would squeeze out of the sample, which requires re-calculation
of its initial pore volume.
 Example 1

A steady-state flow test was conducted on a core sample 1” in diameter

and 2” long. The table below lists the total pressure drop, fluid flowrates
and saturation data for each step of the test.
Compute and plot the effective permeability curves for this core and
estimate Swi and Sor. Oil and water viscosities are 2.5 and 1.1 cp,
respectively
From the test data, we observe:

Oil flowrate is given by Equ. (2):

Rearrangement of the above equation yields:

Applying this equation, with consistent units, to every step yields the
effective permeability to oil. For example, at Sw = 70%,
*1" = 2.54 cm

1 atm = 14.7 psi

*Remember to change
the q to cm3/s

Similarly, the effective permeability to water is computed by:

At Sw = 70%,
The effective permeability values are plotted in the figure below with
smooth curves drawn through the data points. Note that at Sw = 100, kw
is the permeability of the core sample.
• Effective permeabilities can also be obtained from field production data.

• An oil well would produce both oil and water if the saturations of the two fluids
within the well’s production area were above their respective critical values. The
production rate of each fluid would be controlled by Equ. (2).

• If the flow potential gradients for both fluids are equal, the ratio of production
rates would be given by:

*Inverse of Mobility ratio in EOR (3)

• The effective permeabilities would correspond to the average water saturation

within the well’s area of the reservoir, which could be estimated from well logs.
 Correlating Effective Permeability

• Similar to the problem of the capillary pressure curves, heterogeneous

reservoirs display a range of effective permeabilities as wide as permeability
variation.

• To overcome this problem, reservoir engineers have adopted the concept of the
relative permeability, which is simply the ratio of the effective permeability to
some base permeability, kb.
Permeability of oil Ko at Swi
• Therefore,

(4)

where kri is the relative permeability to fluid i at the saturation of ki.

Relative permeability is dimensionless and varies with the wetting-phase
saturation
 Relative permeability

The effective permeability is usually presented in term of relative

permeability.
Relative permeability is the ratio of the effective permeability to a base
permeability.
For example,
1. The ratio of effective k effective
permeability compared to kr 
absolute permeability
k absolute

or,
2. The ratio of effective
permeability to the effective k effective
permeability of non-wetting
kr 
k nw @ Swir
phase at irreducible wetting
phase saturation.
This is water-wet or oil-wet?
Absolute permeability estimation
Absolute permeability estimation

(Tarek Ahmed, page 252)

 Relative Permeability Curve
Effective permeability
From extrapolation

250
ka 400 md
200
Sw Keffnw Keffw
0.1 200 0
150
0.206 118.7 4.4
0.316 64.9 13.3 100
0.4 44.2 20.6
0.5 25.1 29.5 50
0.6 8.8 43.5
0.7 3.7 61.2 0
0.8 0 100 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

Keffnw Keffw
 Relative Permeability Curve

kr = k effective wrt k absolute

ka 400 md
keff/ka 0.6

Sw Keffnw Keffw krnw krw

0.5
0.1 200 0 0.5 0
0.2 118.7 4.4 0.29675 0.011
0.4
0.3 64.9 13.3 0.16225 0.03325
0.4 40 20.6 0.1 0.0515 0.3

0.5 21 29.5 0.0525 0.07375

0.6 8.8 43.5 0.022 0.10875 0.2

0.7 3.7 61.2 0.00925 0.153

0.1
0.8 0 100 0 0.25
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

krnw
krw
 Relative Permeability Curve

keff/knw(Swir) k relative = k effective wrt knw(Swir)

Sw Keffnw Keffw krnw krw
0.1 200 0 1 0 1.2

0.2 118.7 4.4 0.5935 0.022 1

0.3 64.9 13.3 0.3245 0.0665
0.8
0.4 40 20.6 0.2 0.103
0.5 21 29.5 0.105 0.1475 0.6
0.6 8.8 43.5 0.044 0.2175
0.4
0.7 3.7 61.2 0.0185 0.306
0.8 0 100 0 0.5 0.2

0
0 0.5 1

krnw
Relative permeability functions
 Smoothing relative permeability data

• Effective permeability and relative permeability data usually show scatter

caused by experimental errors.

• Smoothing relative permeability data is achieved by two techniques.

a. Relative permeability ratio

The ratio of non-wetting to wetting-phase relative permeability, e.g., kro/krw

or krg/kro, has been found to fall on a semi-logarithmic straight line over
most saturations.
b. Dimensionless saturation

For water-wet rock, dimensionless water saturation is defined as:

(5)

Employing this definition, the following correlations have been found to fit
most relative permeability data:

(6)

(7)

where a, b and c are empirical constants to be determined by regression on the

data. Once the data is fitted, Equs. (6) and (7) can be employed for generating
relative permeability data.
 Example 2
Compute the relative permeability data for Example 1 and smooth it using
Equs. (5), (6) and (7). k = (4.570/60)(2.5)(2x2.54)
o
( x 2.542)(3.7/14.7)
= 0.9673/1.2754

Solution: Ko at Swi (qo = 4.57 and Sw = 36.3) = 0.7584 d = 758.4 md

In Example 1 page 9, the effective permeability to oil (Ko) at Swi was found to be
758.4 md. This shall be employed as the base permeability. Converting
normal water saturation to dimensionless water saturation is done according to
Equ. (5):

All effective permeability values are converted to relative permeabilities using

the base permeability. For example, at Sw = 70%:
The relative permeability data is plotted in the figure shown to the right.
• Best-fitting curves of the form given by Equs. (6) and
(7) are determined by plotting log krw vs. log SwD to
find a and c, and log kro vs. Log (1 - SwD) to find b.

• The two curves are also shown in the figure, and

their equations are:
 0.64

Example:
0.343
At SwD = 1, Krw = 0.64

0.02 0.78
 Estimation of Relative Permeability

• Because of difficulties associated with displacement experiments, a

number of techniques have been proposed for the estimation of relative
permeability from other sources of fluid-rock data.

• For a water-wet system, Purcell derived equations which have been

modified as follows:

(8) (9)
• The integrals in Equs. 8 and 9 are evaluated by graphical
means as shown in Fig. 8.6
• The relative permeabilities computed by Purcell’s method are
based on the permeability of the porous medium.

• One limitation exists with this method, namely, the sum

of krw and kro is equal to one for any given Sw, which is not
correct.

• Another limitation relates to the value of Pc at Sor, which is

usually zero for the imbibition curve.

• We can work around this problem by using the closest data to

Sor and then setting kro at Sor to zero.
 Example 3

The capillary pressure curves for a sandstone reservoir are shown in Fig.
7.12.
Estimate the imbibition relative permeability data for the reservoir of Example
7.4. Imbibition Pc values are read from Fig. 7.12 at various water saturations,
then 1/Pc2 is computed:

1/Pc2 is then plotted vs. Sw, as shown below, and the integrals in Equs. (8)
and (9) are determined graphically at various saturations.

The relative permeability curves that result are also shown below.
Solution Example 3
Note that krw at Sor (Sw = 90%) is equal to 1, which is not always
true especially for water-wet rock.
This is another artifact of the Purcell method.
Kr in water-wet and oil-wet

a
 Applications of relative permeability

• Reservoir analysis that involves estimation of multi-phase flow requires

relative permeability.

• At a certain stage in the life of an oil reservoir, water is injected into the
reservoir to displace the oil and, consequently, enhance the recovery. This
process is called waterflooding.

• In areas swept by water, complete oil displacement is not possible due to

capillary effects; rather, both oil and water would flow
simultaneously.

• The ratio of oil to water flowrates within the swept area would be given by
Equ. (3), which indicates that such ratio varies with water saturation.

• If we are to maximize the qo/qw ratio, we must keep the effective

permeability ratio at a maximum.
• This is achieved by either maintaining Sw within the swept area to a
minimum or modifying the relative permeability characteristics of the
reservoir.

• The second option is adjust the properties of injected water - which is

within our control - in such a way that reduces the capillary pressure.

• If we reduce the water-oil interfacial tension, the capillary pressure for any
pore radius would drop.
• The relative permeability curves would, then, shift towards the
left, i.e., smaller Sw, and the qo/qw ratio would increase for all
Sw values.

• Reducing σwo is achieved by dissolving special chemicals,

called surfactants, in the water at pre-determined
concentrations, and the water flood becomes a surfactant
flood.

• Note that we can also increase the ratio by dissolving

polymers in the water to raise μw, and the water flood
becomes a surfactant/polymer flood.
 KG12603 – Reservoir Rock and
Fluid Properties

Calculation for M Calculate the mobility ratio for the following data:

0.70
Water viscosity = 1 cp
0.60 Oil viscosity = 4 cp
krw = 0.33
Relative permeability

0.50

0.40 *M is an inverse of
kro = 0.58
0.30 flow potential
0.20 Answer: gradients (page 16)
0.10 M = krw x μo
0.00
0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5 0.55 0.6 0.65 0.7 0.75
kro x μw
Water saturation (Sw)

= 0.33 x 4
0.58 x 1

= 2.28
Relative permeability for oil-gas and oil-water systems

From capillary pressure curve

Relative permeability for gas-water system

Sgr = (Sg when Krg = 0)