Application of Implicit Pressure-Explicit Saturation Method to Predict Filtrated Mud Saturation Impact on the Hydrocarbon Reservoirs Formation Damage

Mingxuan Zhu, Li Yu, Xiong Zhang and Afshin Davarpanah
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Mingxuan Zhu: School of Economics and Finance, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710300, China
Li Yu: School of Economics and Finance, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710300, China
Xiong Zhang: School of Economics and Management, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China
Afshin Davarpanah: Department of Mathematics, Aberystwyth University, Penglais Hill, Aberystwyth SY23 3FL, UK

Mathematics, 2020, vol. 8, issue 7, 1-12

Abstract: Hydrocarbon reservoirs’ formation damage is one of the essential issues in petroleum industries that is caused by drilling and production operations and completion procedures. Ineffective implementation of drilling fluid during the drilling operations led to large volumes of filtrated mud penetrating into the reservoir formation. Therefore, pore throats and spaces would be filled, and hydrocarbon mobilization reduced due to the porosity and permeability reduction. In this paper, a developed model was proposed to predict the filtrated mud saturation impact on the formation damage. First, the physics of the fluids were examined, and the governing equations were defined by the combination of general mass transfer equations. The drilling mud penetration in the core on the one direction and the removal of oil from the core, in the other direction, requires the simultaneous dissolution of water and oil flow. As both fluids enter and exit from the same core, it is necessary to derive the equations of drilling mud and oil flow in a one-dimensional process. Finally, due to the complexity of mass balance and fluid flow equations in porous media, the implicit pressure-explicit saturation method was used to solve the equations simultaneously. Four crucial parameters of oil viscosity, water saturation, permeability, and porosity were sensitivity-analyzed in this model to predict the filtrated mud saturation. According to the results of the sensitivity analysis for the crucial parameters, at a lower porosity (porosity = 0.2), permeability (permeability = 2 mD), and water saturation (saturation = 0.1), the filtrated mud saturation had decreased. This resulted in the lower capillary forces, which were induced to penetrate the drilling fluid to the formation. Therefore, formation damage reduced at lower porosity, permeability and water saturation. Furthermore, at higher oil viscosities, due to the increased mobilization of oil through the porous media, filtrated mud saturation penetration through the core length would be increased slightly. Consequently, at the oil viscosity of 3 cP, the decrease rate of filtrated mud saturation is slower than other oil viscosities which indicated increased invasion of filtrated mud into the formation.

Keywords: filtrated mud saturation; formation damage; sensitivity analysis; oil viscosity; capillary force (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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