CESS as eat Aenea ROBERT A. WATTENBARGERGas Reservoir Engineering John Lee Peterson Chair and Professor of Petroleum Engineering Texas A&M U Robert A. Wattenbarger Professor of Petroleum Engineering Texas A&M U, va Pp pescaRGAR First Printing Henry L. Doherty Memorial Fund of AIME Society of Petroleum Engineers Richardson, TX 1996Dedication John Lee ‘To the most important women in my life: Mom Phyllis, nurse Anne, minister-in-training Denise, and renewable energy sources, Katie and Gourtney. Rohert A. Wattenbarger ‘To my loving wife Julie, our three sons, Mike, Chick, and Phil, and our grandtwins, John and Laura. Copyright 1996 by tne Society of Petroleum Engineers ine. Printed, in the United States of America, All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, cannot be reproduced in any form without written consent of the publisher. ISBN 1-55563-073-1John Lee is the Peterson Chair and professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M U. in College Station and executive vice president of technology at S.A. Holditch & Assocs. After receiving a PhD degree from Georgia Inst. of Technology in 1963, he worked as a senior research specialist with Exxon Production Research Co. until 1968. He was associate professor of petroleum engineering at Mississippi State U. from 1968 to 1971 and technical advisor with Exxon Co. U.S.A. from 1971 to 1977. Lee has been with Texas A&M since 1977. He received the SPE John Franklin Carll Award in 1995 and the SPE Reservoir Engineering Award in 1986. He also has been faculty advisor to the SPE student chapter during several school years. Robert A. Wattenbarger has been a professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M U. since 1983. Previously, he worked for Mobil, Mobil Research, and Sinclair Oil companies from 1958 to 1969. From 1969 to 1979, he was vice president and director of Scientific Software-Intercomp Inc. Since 1979, he has consulted through Wattenbarger and Assocs. He holds BS and MS degrees from the U. of Tulsa and a PhD degree from Stanford U., alin petroleum engineering.SPE Textbook Series ‘The Textbook Series of the Society of Petroleum Engineers was established in 1972 by action of the SPE Board of Directors. The Series is intended to ensure availability of high-quality textbooks for use in undergraduate courses in areas clearly identified as being within the petroleum engineering field “The work is directed by the Society's Books Committee, one of more than 40 Society-wide standing committees. Members of the Books committee provide technical evaluation of the book. Below is a listing of those who have been most closely involved in the final preparation of this book. Book Editors Fred Poettmann, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO* Jerry Jargon, Marathon Oil Co., Littleton, CO Roland Horne, Stanford U., Stanford, CA Books Committee (1996) an Hill (chairman), U. of Texas, Austin, TX Waldo Borel, Pennzoil E&P Co., Houston, TX Anil Chopra, Arco E&P Technology, Plano, TX Garry Gregory, Neotechnology Consultants Ltd., Calgary, Alta. ‘Thomas Hewitt, Stantord V., Stantord, CA John Killough, U. of Houston, Houston, TX Susan Peterson, Haliburton Energy Svc., Houston, TX Rajagopal Raghavan, Philips Petroleum Co., Bartlesville, OK Arlie Skov, Ali M. Skov inc., Santa Barbara, CA Allan Spivak, Intera West, Los Angeles, CA Hans Juvkam Wold, Texas A&M U., College Station, TXIntroduction Natural gas production has become increasinaly important in the U.S., and the wellhead revenue «generated from itis now greater than the wellhead revenue generated from oil production, Because this trend eventually willbe followed worldwide, we fee! that tis important to emphasize gas reservoir engineering courses at the undergraduate (evel and to have a textbook devoted to this purpose. This book also serves as an introduction to gas reservoir engineering for graduate students and practicing petroleum engineers. ‘Although much of the technology for oil wells applies to gas weits, there are still many differences. It is important to learn these differences and to have a good, fundamental background in how to recognize and handle them. We have tried to provide practical equations and methods while emphasizing the fundamentals on which they are based. We have not attempted tobe complete in the sense of presenting the best-known solution(s) to aif problems in this area of technology. In many cases, we didn't even present the problem, much less a solution. Instead, we concentrated on fundamentals andhope to have made the literature in gas reservoir engineering more accessible both now and in the future. If you don’t find your favorite topic in the table of contents or in the index, it simply didn't make our short list of fundamentats that we believed to be key parts ofthe literature, We wrote this book at a time of great change in the computational methods used by petroleum engineers. Most calculations arising frequently are done with computers and either commercial software packages or spreadsheets written by the engineer or an associate. While clearly in the interest of enhanced productivity, this modem trend also promotes a "black-box" approach to engineering. We hope to have made the box a little less opaque by discussing fundamentals, emphasizing assumptions and limitations in methods, and illustrating our recommended methods with completely worked examples. Stil, we have contributed to the computational trend on several occasions by presenting and recommending computational techniques that would requite unreasonably complicated arithmetic done by hand. Ourintent, of course. is that these complicated, methods be implemented ina spreadsheet or other computer program. We believe that this approach is better than providing only simple (and therefore more approximate) techniques that can be implemented easily with a hand-held calculator. Commercial petroleum software is changing so rapidly and, in many cases, is so specific to the individual vender, that we cannot possibly illustrate use of the leading or most popular software for a given application. Accordingly, we tave tried to present computational methods that are generic and {hat can be found in a similar form in virtually any commercial package that existed at the time of this waitingAcknowledgments This book would not exist without our students—a cliché, perhaps, but literally true in this case. Many of the early drafts of chapters were written by students, often in preparation for lectures we gave on gas reservoir engineering to practicing engineers in the U.S. and abroad, In many cases, their Contributions survived even the critical eye of our superb staff editor at SPE, Valerie Dawe. We would also like to acknowledge the valuable assistance of a number of people who have contributed to this: book with word processing, proofreading, checking of technical content, and valuable suggestions. For Chaps. 2 through 4 and 11, we thank Bryan Maggard, James Keating, Mauricio Villegas, Liyan Zhao, and Raj Dhir. For Chaps. 1 and 5 through 10, special mention is due Jennifer Johnston, now a physician-in-training, and engineers Jay Rushing and Tom Blasingame. Ede Hilton, a talented and dedicated administrative assistant, was also a very important member of our team. To each— thank you!Contents 1. Properties of Natural Gases . 1 4.1 Introduction... : : u 1:2. Review of Definitions and Fundamental Frinipies oe : : 1 1.3. Properties of Natural Gases : 2 1.4 Caleulation of Pseudoeriical Gas Properties -..... — ees) 1.5 Dranchuk and Abou-Kassem'® Correlation for z Factor... +... é 2 16 4.8 GasFVF oe... ooo : vieceses 18 1.7 GasDensily .... : obocned oe Be eei7, 1.8 Gas Compressibilty me feces : : 27 1.9. Gas Viscosity : = fins 18 1.10 Properties of Reservoir Oils B08 foes vs 18 1.11 Properties of Reservoir Waters . +23 1.12 Water Vapor Content of Gas 1.13 Gas Hydrates 1.14 PV Compressibiliy Correlations fone : cee SH 1.15 Gas Turbulence Factor and Non-Darcy Flow Coetticient ... : renee BZ 4.96 Summary : i oo : oe - 32 2, Fundamentals of Gas Flow in Conduits ........+6+..0 37 2.1 Introduction : ieee eer tas 2.2 Systems, Heat, Work, and Energy | me ss 87 2.3 First Law of Thermodynamics : : vee 39 2.4 Mechanical Energy Balance ne o : os sees 40 2.5 Energy Loss Resulting From Friction : Becreoco corer ~ 40 2.6 Bemouli's Equation ...... , oe : at 3. Gas Flow Measurement . 3.1. Introduction 3.2 Orifice Meters : eee 3.3 Orifice Meter Installation .... 7 cee a 3.4 Critical Flow Prover cee ‘i . ces 53 3.5 Choke Nipples ceetereseene 6 ‘i ed pee Sa 3.6 Pitot Tube = cee cee een 54 4. Gas Flow in Wellbores ........ 4.1. Introduction : Se eee 4.2 BHP Caloulation for Dry Gas Wells oe a 58 4.3 Effect of Liquids on BHFP Calculations... Soaacote vise 66 4.4 Evaluation Gas-Well Production Performance - : 73 4.5 Forecasting Gas-Well Performance . : : 76 5. Fundamentals of Fluid Flow in Porous Media .... - 8 5.1 Introduction ; : : ; : : UT at 5.2 Ideal-Reservoir Model ......... bos fi ileteeteeeteseees BF 5.3 Solutions to the Diffusivity Equation ce Beneuoneese a 5.4 Radius of Investigation ....... colette me Beco 99 5.5 Principle of Superposition ..... : wie : veieteseesee 101 5.6 Homer's Approximation . pene 103 5,7 van Everdingen-Hurst Solutions to the Diflusivity Equation... betetetneeseeeeeses 108 5.8 Summary .... coe er vices os 108 6. Pressure-Transient Testing of Gas Wells, 1” 6.1 Introduction . sete eee a eee eee