Effective Mechanisms to Relate Initial Rock Permeability to Outcome of Relative Permeability Modification

Faaiz Al-shajalee, Colin Wood, Quan Xie and Ali Saeedi
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Faaiz Al-shajalee: Department of Petroleum, College of Engineering, Kirkuk University, Kirkuk 36001, Iraq
Colin Wood: Energy Business Unit, Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Kensington WA 6151, Australia
Quan Xie: Department of Petroleum, Curtin University, Kent Street, Perth 6102, Australia
Ali Saeedi: Department of Petroleum, Curtin University, Kent Street, Perth 6102, Australia

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-17

Abstract: Excessive water production is becoming common in many gas reservoirs. Polymers have been used as relative permeability modifiers (RPM) to selectively reduce water production with minimum effect on the hydrocarbon phase. This manuscript reports the results of an experimental study where we examined the effect of initial rock permeability on the outcome of an RPM treatment for a gas/water system. The results show that in high-permeability rocks, the treatment may have no significant effect on either the water and gas relative permeabilities. In a moderate-permeability case, the treatment was found to reduce water relative permeability significantly but improve gas relative permeability, while in low-permeability rocks, it resulted in greater reduction in gas relative permeability than that of water. This research reveals that, in an RPM treatment, more important than thickness of the adsorbed polymer layer ( e ) is the ratio of this thickness on rock pore radius ( e r ).

Keywords: water shutoff; gas reservoirs; polymer; rock permeability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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