Factors affecting

Permeability

Skin Factor

Changes in the permeability of formation.

materials such as mud filtrate, cement slurry, or clay

particles to enter the formation during drilling,
completion or workover operations and reduce the
permeability around the wellbore.

Definition :Basically the skin is changes in the

permeability of formation around the wellbore

This effect is commonly referred to as a wellbore damage and the region

of altered permeability is called the skin zone.

This zone can extend from a few inches to several feet from the wellbore.

Many other wells are stimulated by acidizing or fracturing which in effect

increase the permeability near the wellbore.

The permeability near the wellbore is

ALWAYS

different from

the permeability away from the well where the formation has not been
affected by drilling or stimulation.

The skin factor is represented by letter S im darcy formula

well stimulation techniques will normally enhance the

properties of the formation and increase the
permeability around the wellbore, so that a decrease in
pressure

sure drop is observed. The resulting effect of altering

the permeability around the well bore is called the skin
effect.

Signs of Skin factor (S)

Positive (+) :

pskin > 0, indicates an additional pressure drop due to

wellbore damage, i.e., kskin < kformation.

Negative (-):

p skin < 0, indicates less pressure drop due to

wellbore improvement i.e., kskin > kformation.

ZERO

pskin = 0, indicates no changes in the wellbore

condition, i.e., kskin = k.

Factors affecting the

permeability

Natural factors :
Rock-related factors are basic characteristics, structure
or indigenous properties of reservoir rocks such as grain
size and shape and clay cementing.

Artificial factors:
The type of fluid medium use for permeability
measurement as well as the physical and chemical
characteristics of major factors affecting absolute
permeability.

Rock interaction-induced laboratory artifacts

Thermodynamic factors affecting absolute permeability
basically consist of temperature effects, based on some
literature data. These fall under category of fluid.

laboratory artifacts
The mechanincal factors are related to the effect of
mechanical stresses or confining pressures on absolute
permeability.