Gas Condensate Fluid Model

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Four Reasons Why Your Gas Condensate Fluid Model Is Probably Wrong
By Tom Fontaine, Fekete Australia Pty Ltd

The generation of a representative fluid model is critical for realistic simulation of gas condensate reservoirs. There are three steps in developing a representative fluid model. 1. Obtain fluid sample 2. Measure fluid properties 3. Construct fluid model Each of these steps is complex. A conscientious, consistent approach must be used for each step to ensure the best chance of obtaining a representative fluid model. Common and not so common errors are discussed with relevance to gas condensate reservoirs. FLUID SAMPLING Reason 1: Improper well conditioning Conditioning of the well prior to PVT sampling is extremely important. Well clean up time should be carefully planned to ensure that all contaminants are removed and hydrocarbon withdrawal is minimized prior to sampling. It is essential that the well production is stable prior to and during sampling. Tubing head pressure and temperature should be monitored. Other compositional indicators can also be monitored, such as CO2 content, water composition etc. Proper well conditioning can take days, even in high permeability reservoirs. Every effort should be made to sample above dewpoint, which is often unknown. Drawdown should be kept as low as possible while still maintaining stable flow. For ideal subsurface or surface PVT sampling, it is best to have small perforation intervals. Hydrocarbon columns are known to have compositional variations with depth. Short perforation intervals allows these variations to be captured during sampling. If the perforations are over a large pay interval, the fluid sample will represent the most mobile fluid. If the tubing is too large, greater drawdown is necessary to maintain stable flow. Greater drawdown means more chance you will be sampling below dew point. If drawdown is reduced, flow may become unstable. Unfortunately, there are often conflicts between the requirements for PVT sampling and the requirements for productivity testing during a well test. Productivity testing requires large tubing, high drawdowns and large perforation intervals. PVT sampling requires exactly the opposite. It is important to perform well modelling to design the test to meet the sampling and productivity testing objectives.

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Gas Condensate Fluid Model

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Reason 2: Sample contamination To help ensure that the fluid is sampled above dew point, sub-surface sampling tools are often used. The major problem with these tools is the high probability of contamination of the sample. Even a small amount of contamination, especially in the heptanes plus, can cause significant errors in the lab evaluated PVT properties. Contamination from oil based mud is particularly difficult to detect. RFTs are not recommended, except for preliminary analysis, as sample volumes are small. MDTs allow fluid to be pumped through, and have optical and density related techniques for determining the nature of the fluid collected. Surface readout of this data should be carefully monitored to try to ensure that the fluid composition is stable. This is much better than the RFT, but results should still be treated with caution, and compared to surface samples. Cased hole bottom hole samplers are also available with surface readout of pressure, temperature and density. These only allow for small sample volumes, so the chance for contamination is fairly high. The most common method of sampling is surface sampling. Gas and liquid samples are collected from a separator and recombined at reservoir conditions. It is usually the cheapest method, and provides large volumes of easily available samples. Even though there are large volumes are samples, contamination is still a concern because there is more equipment involved. Common sources of contamination are dirty sampling lines and dirty containers. Another fairly common and easily preventable source of error is faulty metering. Two common problems with conventional separator sampling and recombination are liquid carry over into the gas stream and gas carry under into the liquid stream. For instance, as gas rates increase separator efficiency can decrease, which can result in liquid in the gas outlet. Isokinetic sampling can be used to quantify and correct these problems. Split stream sampling is another option that may eliminate inconsistencies in conventional separator sampling. A small amount of the stream is sampled through a special sampling manifold with a mixing device. Because the sample volumes are small, near equilibrium separations can be obtained much more efficiently than those obtained under standard separation conditions.

Equation of state modelling can often be used to verify the quality of samples.

FLUID PROPERTY MEASUREMENT Reason 3: Inadequate or poor PVT analysis Although hydrocarbon compositions are now more commonly measured up to C12 instead of the traditional C7, this may still not be adequate. Condensate behavior is very sensitive to the properties of the small quantity of heavy hydrocarbons dissolved in the gas. Compositional analysis of at least C20 is preferred. Insufficient characterization provides an unnecessary degree of freedom in tuning the aromatic fraction during the fluid modelling stage.

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Gas Condensate Fluid Model

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The combination of small volumes of liquid with large volumes of gas leads to problems in obtaining accurate PVT measurements on gas condensate fluids. Measurements of small liquid volumes and dew point pressure have a particularly high uncertainty. Large variations can occur between results from different samples, different labs or even different lab technicians. This is especially true for liquid rich condensates where fluids may be at conditions close to the critical point.

Specially designed laboratory testing can greatly improve the accuracy of PVT measurements. Material balance calculations can be performed on CVD and CCE experiments to investigate potential data problems.

FLUID MODEL CONSTRUCTION Reason 4: Inappropriate fluid model Various equation of state (EOS) models are available. The choice of which model to use depends on fluid type and condition. For example, the Modified Redlich-Kwong-Soave may be better for fluids such as black, low and medium volatility oils and lean gases far from the critical point. The Peng-Robinson EOS is preferred for highly volatile oils or liquids rich gas condensates nearer the critical point. It may be necessary to use more than one model. For instance, the Modified Redlich-Kwong-Soave EOS generally gives poor density predictions. Sometimes the Benedict-Webb-Rubin-Starling equation is used to calculate densities. Often, fluid models are built by matching data just because it is available. There are quite a few degrees of freedom in EOS modelling, so poor data can often be matched just as easily as good data. It is better to evaluate the data and only match the best data. Sometimes not all the data can be matched. The data to be matched should be listed in order of data quality and importance. It is often prohibitive to use fully compositional simulation for full field simulation. Modified black oil models can be used with reasonable confidence to model gas condensate fields under depletion or recycling above the dew point. For modelling of gas condensate fields cycling below the dewpoint, fully compositional simulation with a minimum number of about six components is required.

2D fully compositional modelling can be used to estimate errors associated with using modified black oil models.

Simulation of gas condensate reservoirs is very complex. Obviously, a key component in the
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Gas Condensate Fluid Model

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modelling is to develop representative fluid models. There are a large number of potential sources of error in the steps necessary to develop these fluid models. Operators need to be aware of these potential sources of error, and take the appropriate actions to minimize them.

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