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This article contains highlights of paper SPE 102079 From Straight Lines to Deconvolution: The Evolution of the State of the Art in Well Test Analysis, SPEREE (Feb. 2008), 11-1, pp 4162.
Alain C. Gringarten (a.gringarten@imperial.ac.uk) holds the Chair of Petroleum Engineering at Imperial College London, where he is also director of the Centre for Petroleum Studies. Before joining Imperial in 1997, he held a variety of senior technical and management positions with Scientific SoftwareIntercomp; Schlumberger; and the French Geological Survey in Orlans, France. Gringartens research interests include fi ssured fluid-bearing formations, shale gas, fractured wells, gas condensate and volatile oil reservoirs, high and low enthalpy geothermal energy, hot dry rocks, and radioactive waste disposal. He is a recognized expert in well test analysis and received the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Formation Evaluation Award for 2001, the 2003 SPE John Franklin Carll Award, the 2005 SPE Cedric K. Ferguson certificate for the best technical paper published in 2004, and the North Sea SPE Regional Service Award for 2009. Gringarten was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer for 200304. He has published more than 90 technical papers and was responsible for many advances in well test interpretation. A member of SPE since 1969, he was elected a Distinguished Member in 2002 and an Honorary Member in 2009. Gringarten has chaired or organized many SPE Advanced Technology Workshops, and is currently a member of the following SPE International committees: R&D; Information and Management; Carll-Uren-Lester Awards; Honorary and Distinguished Members Selection Committee; and SPE PE Faculty Pipeline Award Committee; and was 2011 chair of the SPE Talent Council. He holds MS and PhD degrees in petroleum engineering from Stanford University and an engineering degree from cole Centrale Paris, France.
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q1
Rate
q2
t 1 t 2 t i
log p
qi
q n1
Flow Period n
qn
pressure derivative
t t n1 tp = jn=1 i tj tp+t
log t
Log-log analysis
pi
Pressure
p=|p(t) p( t =0)|
Time
f (t )
Specialized analysis
t = t (t) t (t =0)
Fig. 1 Log-log and specialized analysis.
log graph. In such a graph, various flow regimes (e.g., linear, bilinear, spherical, radial) exhibit distinctive shapes and occur at different times, and this is used to identify them (log-log pressure and derivative analysis). The existence of the flow regimes can be verified on flow-regime-specialized graphs by plotting p =[ p (t )p (t =0)] vs. f (t ) on a Cartesian graph (specialized analysis), where f is a flow-regime-specific
function. f (t ) is equal to t for wellbore storage and pseudosteady-state flow, t for linear flow, 1 t for spherical flow, log(t ) for radial flow,etc. The other signal is [ pip (t )], where pi is the initial pressure (Fig. 2). Because pi is usually not known, the signal is actually p (t ), to be plotted against a flow-regime-specific superposition time, n 1 n 1 i =1 [(qi qi 1)/(qn 1qn )]f ( j =1 tj +t)f (t), on a Cartesian plot (Horner analysis).
f (t ) is the same as for specialized analyses. In both specialized and Horner analyses, a straight line is obtained where the flow regime dominates and the straight-line slope and intercept provide the well and reservoir parameters that control this flow regime.
q1
Rate
qi q2
q n1
Flow Period n
qn
t t i t n1 tp = jn=1 i tj tp+t
t 1
t 2
p* p
pi
Pressure
pi p(t = 0)|
[(q
n1 i =1
qi 1 ) (qn1 qn )] f
n1 j =1
t j + t f (t )
Time
Horner analysis
Fig. 2 Horner analysis.
t = t (t) t (t =0)
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Tech 101
combination can yield several thousand different interpretation models to match all observed well behavior. The challenge for the well test interpreter is to diagnose from the observed well behavior which components should be included in the interpretation model. A schematic of the complete interpretation process is shown in Fig. 4.
NEAR-WELLBORE EFFECTS
Wellbore Storage Skin Fractures Partial Penetration Horizontal Well EARLY TIMES
RESERVOIR BEHAVIOR
Homogeneous Heterogeneous 2-Porosity 2-Permeability Composite
BOUNDARY EFFECTS
Specified Rates Specified Pressure Leaky Boundary
MIDDLE TIMES
LATE TIMES
Fig. 3 Components of the well test interpretation model. applied. And, once a straight line has been selected, there is no rule to indicate if it is indeed the correct one (i.e., the one corresponding to the flow regime being analyzed). This is why, when powerful personal computers became available, the derivative approach superseded log-log pressure analysis, which before had superseded straightline techniques. This does not mean that new techniques have eliminated previous ones. These are still used, but they are
IDENTIFICATION
DATA
VERIFICATION
EARLY TIMES
MIDDLE TIMES
LATE TIMES
Homogeneous Heterogeneous
2-Porosity 2-Permeability Composite
NO CONSISTENT? YES CONSISTENT WELL TEST INTERPRETATION MODEL CALCULATE MODEL BEHAVIOR
NEAR-WELLBORE EFFECTS
RESERVOIR BEHAVIOR
BOUNDARY EFFECTS
ANOTHER MODEL?
YES
NO
END
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Pressure, psia
trend, which must not be confused with a boundary effect), phase redistribution in the wellbore, and a pressure trend in the reservoir. But the most impact by far comes from the rate history. Oversimplifying the flow-rate history can jeopardize the reliability of the pressure derivative as a diagnostic tool (this holds true also for Horneranalysis).
30,000
40,000
50,000
0 60,000
(a)
102
FP66 FP186 FP203 FP386
101
102
Deconvolved Derivative
103
103
102
101
10
102
103
104
105
(b)
integrated in a methodology that allows them to be applied correctly. Pressure derivatives combine great diagnosis and verification capabilities with the accuracy of straight-line methods. Derivative shapes for various flow regimes at early, middle, and late times in a flow period are distinctly different, which is not necessarily the case with pressure change. For instance, spherical flow is easy to identify on the derivative, whereas it is invisible on the pressure drop curve. The main drawback of derivatives, however, is that, contrary to
pressure data, they are not measured but must be calculated. A number of factors can affect the shape of the derivative curve and, therefore, mislead the interpreter. Some can be easily identified: derivation algorithm, sampling frequency of the data acquisition, gauge resolution, time or pressure errors at the start of the period, erratic raw data points, or multiphase flow. Others are more difficult to see and may affect the analysis. These include end effects (if the last pressure in a flow period is too high or too low, the derivative shows an upward or downward
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Tech 101
hours. This could not be seen from the longest buildups, limited to 10 3 hours. Deconvolution actually blurs the difference between conventional well test and production-data analysis. During the course of many years, several methods have been proposed to analyze production data to extract all the information that is usually obtained from conventional well test analysis without the constraint of shutting in wells. These methods have been attempting to convert variable rate and pressure into variable pressure at constant rate or into variable rate at constant pressure. Examples are the decline curve analysis by use of material balance time, the reciprocal productivity index method, and the rate/ time type curve. The aim of all these methods is achieved with deconvolution, which produces much cleaner transformed data and much better results when estimating permeability and distances to boundaries.
Whats Next?
Improvements in well test analysis will essentially come from three areas: richer signals (i.e., those containing more information), better interpretation techniques (providing significant improvements in the identification and validation of the interpretation model), and more-complex models that represent the geology better. Reservoir geology
is very complex, whereas well test interpretation models are rather simple. Some of the geological complexity can be seen and quantified from well test analysis with more-complex interpretation models that represent geological bodies more closely. For instance, vertical permeability and meander information in a fluvial meandering channel can be found from well test data in the transition between radial flow in middle times and channel flow at late times. The corresponding data are ignored when the analysis is performed with the usual simple interpretation models. Efforts to reduce costs and environmental impact are also likely to impose additional changes. Well testing in exploration and appraisal wells has become increasingly unpopular in recent years. Reasons include cost, safety, and environmental impact. Well testing also has become rare in production wells because of the potential revenue loss during buildups. Whether suitable alternatives can be found is the subject of regular debate. Alternatives to DSTs include wireline formation tests and miniDSTs for sampling, permeability, and initial reservoir pressure; core and log analyses for permeability; and geology, seismic analysis, and geochemistry for reservoir heterogeneities, boundaries, and fluid contacts. However, there is no
suitable well-testing replacement for fi nding skin (well damage), effective permeability, and hydraulic connectivity throughout large reservoir volumes and obtaining the large fluid samples required for sizing surface processing facilities or for determining the quality of the fluids from a commercial viewpoint. Production tests, on the other hand, tend to be replaced by continuous recording with permanent pressure and rate gauges in production wells. These data are particularly well suited for analysis with deconvolution.
Conclusions
Well test analysis has come a long waysince the 1950s when the interpretation methods on the basis of straight lines gave unreliable results. We now have a methodology that provides repeatability and techniques with derivatives and deconvolution that enable a high level of confi dence in interpretation results. It can be safely predicted that the importance of well test analysis in reservoir characterization will continue to increase as new tools such as permanent downhole pressure gauges and downhole flowmeters become more widely used and as the scale relationship with the interpretation of other data from geophysics, geology, and petrophysics becomes better understood. TWA
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