Abstract
The water-wet sandstone reservoirs in the Liushagang Formation of the Beibuwan Basin has tremendous exploration potential for oil reserves in the South China Sea. However, owing to the weak correlations between petrophysical parameters and oil productivity, the production performance and seepage capacity showed significant differences in various reservoirs. The production performance of the field was evaluated by characterizing the mobility of two-phase flow through the concept of classical global mobility. However, global mobility still does not consider differential displacement pressure (DDP) and movable oil saturation (MOS). Therefore, a new index based on the Li–Horne model was established to simultaneously evaluate the seepage capacity of water-wet sandstone reservoirs, accounting for DDP and MOS. The detailed work stemming from the model included selecting water-wet sandstones with different lithologies and comparing the displacement effects of different flooding systems, oil viscosities, injection water salinities, pressure conditions, and MOS in multiple sets of parallel core samples. Finally, the new index was validated. A strong correlation was found between the new index and oil productivity per-unit differential pressure through displacement analysis of rock/oil/water, rock/oil/gas, and rock/oil/polymer systems on several core samples. The developed index for evaluating seepage capacity is suitable for different sandstones, flooding systems, oil viscosities, injection water salinities, pressure conditions, and productivity test data, thus providing insight into the production performance and seepage capacity parameters of water-wet sandstone reservoirs.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by China National Science and Technology Major Project (2016ZX05024-006), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020TQ0299 and 2020M682520), CNOOC China Limited Major Science and Technology Project (CNOOC-KJ135ZDXM38ZJ01ZJ), and Scientific Research Project of Zhanjiang Branch of CNOOC (ZYKY-2022-ZJ-02). The China Scholarship Council is appreciated for supporting Chen’s study.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 149 • Issue 4 • August 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 5, 2022
Accepted: Mar 17, 2023
Published online: May 29, 2023
Published in print: Aug 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Oct 29, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Basins
- Bodies of water (by type)
- Continuum mechanics
- Displacement (mechanics)
- Dynamics (solid mechanics)
- Engineering materials (by type)
- Engineering mechanics
- Floods
- Geomechanics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Hydraulic engineering
- Hydraulic structures
- Materials engineering
- Pressure (type)
- Reservoirs
- Salt water
- Sandstone
- Seepage
- Soil mechanics
- Soil properties
- Solid mechanics
- Stones
- Structural mechanics
- Water (by type)
- Water and water resources
- Water management
- Water pressure
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