Temperature transient analysis during boundary dominated flow period

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2018

Abstract

Temperature transient analysis is emerging as a reservoir characterization and production analysis approach partly due to the progress in the downhole temperature monitoring system. Among different flow regimes encountered during reservoir exploration, the long-lasting boundary dominated flow is a major focus since most of the hydrocarbon is recovered during this period. In this work, we derive a novel temperature transient analytical solution to model arriving temperature signals under boundary dominated flow, which is validated in multiple cases with numerical results. This solution can be incorporated with previous temperature transient analytical solutions to model the temperature signals during the entire life cycle of the production well. Compared to the heating Joule-Thomson effect in the transient period near the production well, a temporal cooling effect is observed throughout the entire volumetric reservoir after pressure transient reaches the reservoir boundary. This finding enables the thermal surveillance from monitoring wells away from the production well during boundary dominated flow. Among all the parameters involved, total compressibility and production drainage area are sensitive to this cooling effect only. From the thermal modeling, we extend existing reservoir characterization procedures to incorporate the boundary dominated flow period. Drainage area can be estimated from the measured temperature signals acquired in both production and monitoring wells. Decent accuracies of the estimations (more than 93%) are achieved from the examples presented in this work. The estimations from the monitoring wells are more accurate (more than 99% accuracy) compared to those from production wells. We find that monitoring well temperature transient analysis is promising for field application during the boundary dominate flow period. Another implication of this work is to develop variable rate temperature transient analysis (rate-temperature transient analysis) and temperature based decline curve analysis for reservoir characterization.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

SPE Western Regional Meeting Proceedings

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