Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 308–316

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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/petrol

Pressure transient analysis of low permeability reservoir with pseudo

threshold pressure gradient
Daolun Lia,n, Wenshu Zhaa, Shufeng Liub, Lei Wangc, Detang Lud
a
Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui, 230009, China
b
Logging & Testing Services Company, Daqing Oilfield Co Ltd, Daqing, Heilongjiang, 163453, China
c
Key Laboratory of Neutronics and Radiation Safety, Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui, 230031, China
d
University of Science and Technology of China, Anhui, Hefei, 230027, China

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Threshold pressure gradient (TPG) is an important mechanism for fluid flow through low-permeability
Received 5 October 2015 reservoirs, which would explain the phenomena that pressure derivative curves exhibit a straight line of
Received in revised form slope that is larger than zero after radial flow regime. A mathematical single-phase flow model in-
23 May 2016
corporating pseudo TPG is proposed to describe the flow behavior in low permeability reservoirs. Fully
Accepted 26 May 2016
Available online 27 May 2016
implicit numerical simulation based on PEBI grid is developed to study the transient pressure response.
Two field data are used to calibrate and validate the proposed model and the code. Based on one of field
Keywords: data, parametric studies are conducted to investigate the effect of minimum TPG, pseudo TPG and
Pseudo threshold pressure gradient nonlinear exponent on the pressure transient response for a vertical well. We find that pseudo TPG can
NoNzero pressure derivative
explain the unique and consistent characteristic of the pressure transient response in low permeability
Low permeability reservoir
reservoirs. The finding is useful for petroleum engineers to interpret the field data to obtain some basic
Numerical solution
PEBI gridding parameters for low permeability reservoirs.
Tight oil & 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Gas reservoirs

1. Introduction
The increasing energy demand, rising energy prices and de-
clining conventional oil/gas reserves lead to many increasing
development of oil and gas in low permeability reservoirs. In
China, the implementation of a welltesting program of buildup
tests conducted on wells in low permeability reservoirs has re-
vealed a unique and consistent characteristic of the pressure
transient response. The characteristic is that pressure change and
pressure derivative curves exhibit a straight line of slope larger
than zero after radial flow regime. The test pressure responses
seem to describe a composite reservoir behavior with high mo-
bility of inner zone and small mobility of outer zone. However, the
test pressure responses cannot be interpreted by a composite re-
servoir model because a composite reservoir model should not
exist for every well in a reservoir with very small water cut that is
less than 1%. Therefore, the welltesting program may shed light on
the drive mechanism of low permeability reservoirs. Research
shows that Darcy's law should be corrected by the threshold
pressure gradient (TPG) in low permeability reservoirs.
Many researchers have studied TPG in low permeability
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ldaol@ustc.edu.cn (D. Li).
reservoirs. Miller and Low (1963) reported the existence of TPG in
the water flow through soils with high clay content. Pascal (1981)
studied the effect of TPG on the fluid flow through a porous media.
Prada et al. (1999) pointed out that Darcy's law should be cor-
rected for the effect of the threshold pressure gradient. Wang et al.
(2006) studied TPG of heavy oil through the dynamic viscoelastic
experiments. In nanopermeability shale-gas reservoirs, threshold
pressure gradient also would exist for gas flow due to the ex-
tremely low permeability (Civan, 2013).
TPG is defined as the level of pressure gradient below which
fluid cannot flow. When pressure gradient is larger than TPG
and overcomes the viscous forces, fluid starts to flow, which is
always called as low velocity and non-Darcy flow. When TGP
exists, the fluid flow boundaries are controlled by TPG and extend
outward continuously, while the fluid beyond this boundary can-
not flow.
In China, some low permeability reservoirs are under devel-
opment and the pressure data measured during well shut-in are
urgent to be interpreted to evaluate the reservoirs. The study of
mechanism of TPG and its application have aroused wide attention
(Hao et al., 2008; Cai et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2006, 2011; Guo
et al., 2012; Luo and Wang, 2012). During the derivation of the
analytical solution (Luo and Wang, 2012; Wang et al., 2011), the
governing equations were transformed into homogeneity

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2016.05.036
0920-4105/& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 D. Li et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 308–316
equations through the definition of dimensionless pressure. Unlike
the paper (Luo and Wang, 2012; Wang et al., 2011), Guo et al.
(2012) used fundamental solution of the point source function in
the Laplace domain to obtain the bottom hole pressure response
function. Cai et al. (2008) studied the typical curves of wells with
vertical fractures in double-porosity reservoirs. Although the de-
rivations of analytical solution are a little different, the conclusions
are the same: the upwarping feature of the type curves appears
during med-late time period due to the existence of TPG. Xu et al.
(2007) pointed out that the boundary layer fluid was one of the
main factors causing the nonlinear seepage law of low perme-
ability reservoirs based on experiment of flow in micro tubes of
2.5 mm and 1 mm radii.
The most common form of the corrected Darcy's law is (Prada
and Civan, 1999):
⎧ K⎛ ∇p ⎞
⎪ u = − ⎜ ∇p − λ⎟ ∇p > λ
⎨ μ⎝ ∇p ⎠
⎪
⎩u = 0 ∇p < λ
where u is the flow velocity in m /s , μ is the fluid viscosity in Pa.s, K
is permeability in m2, ∇p and λ are pressure gradient and TPG in
Pa/m respectively. In Eq. (1), λ is regarded as absolute TPG.
Based on the complicate distribution of pore throat size in the
low permeability reservoirs, researchers proposed the concept of
pseudo threshold pressure gradient (pseudo TPG, λ pseudo ). The low
permeability formation has a wide range of pore throat size. The
viscous forces in the large pore throats are small and fluid easily
overcomes the viscous forces to flow. For the smaller pore throats,
the viscous forces are relatively larger and thus fluid needs to
overcome larger forces to flow. Therefore, when the pressure
gradient is small, the fluid mainly flows through the pores with
large throats, and when pressure gradient increases slowly, the
fluid gradually flows through the pores with smaller throats, and
total flow rate increases correspondingly. When pressure gradients
exceed the largest TPG, the flow begins to obey Darcy's law.
Therefore, the smallest pore throat determines the maximum
TPG, denoted as λ max ; the largest pore throat determines the
minimum TPG (min TPG), denoted as λ min . If λ min is equal to zero, it
means that TPG does not exist in the largest pore throat. If λ min is
large than zero, it means that TPG exists in the largest pore
throat.
Fig. 1. Darcy’ law with pseudo TPG. Flow flux vs. pressure gradient shows that
when TPG exists, the linear relationship does not pass through the origin, but in-
tercepts the pressure gradient axis at the pseudo TPG.
309
Fig. 1 presents a typical non-Darcy flow curve (Shi et al., 2009;
Yu et al., 2012; Zeng et al., 2012) in ultra-low permeability re-
servoirs, which no longer follows Darcy’s law. The flow curve is a
combination of a straight line and a concave curve. When the
pressure gradient is greater than maximum TPG ( λ max ), the velo-
city–pressure gradient curve is a straight line, and its extrapolation
has an intersection “ λ pesudo ” with the pressure gradient axis, which
is defined as pseudo threshold pressure gradient (pseudo TPG).
When the pressure gradient is less than λ max , the velocity–pressure
gradient relationship is a concave curve, and its intersection with
the pressure gradient axis is min TPG( λ min ).
When pseudo TPG exists, the flow in the porous media can be
expressed as:
⎧ K⎛ ∇p ⎞
⎪ u = − ⎜ ∇p − λ⎟ ∇p > λ max
⎨ μ⎝ ∇p ⎠
⎪
⎩ u = f (K , μ , ∇p, λ ) ∇p < λ max (2)
(1)
Where f (K , μ, ∇p, λ ) is a nonlinear function. When the pressure
gradient is greater than λ max , flow follows Darcy's law.
Many models were proposed to describe function of
f (K , μ, ∇p, λ ). Deng et al. (2001) modeled Eq. (2) by a function with
3 parameters. Xiong et al. (2009) used nonlinear flow segment and
quasi-linear flow segment to model the nonlinear function. Li et al.
(2008) used a quadratic function of ∇p to model the nonlinear
flow. Shi et al. (2009) used throat density distribution function to
calculate the pressure gradient and to establish the nonlinear
function.
During the application study of TPG, some researchers use
superposition principle to solve Equation Eq. (1) to study the
pressure transient response during shut-in period. These stu-
dies show that TPG is the reason that the slopes of curves of dp
and dp′ are large than zero at med-late time (Cai et al., 2008;
Wang et al., 2011; Guo et al., 2012; Luo and Wang, 2012).
However, the result is doubted because the equation in-
corporating TPG is not homogenous and superposition principle
cannot be used to solve the flow model incorporating absolute
TPG (Li et al., 2015).
Some researchers use numerical simulation to study non-darcy
flow behaviors. Yu et al. (2012) used the effective permeability of
low permeability reservoir to describe non-darcy flow in low
permeability reservoirs, and performed an integrated study on an
actual low permeability reservoir. Yin et al. (2011) used dynamic
permeability for low-permeability reservoirs to study the effect of
pseudo TPG on the pressure distribution of low-permeability re-
servoirs. Wu et al.(2013) established a model with TPG and other
nonlinear mechanisms to describe flow in unconventional gas
reservoirs. However, the effect of TPG on pressure transient re-
sponse is not discussed in the three papers.
Although many papers study the absolute TPG and pseudo TPG,
no papers use the numerical simulation to study the pressure
transient response for the flow model with pseudo TPG.
In this paper, we aim to fill this gap to study the effect of
pseudo TPG on pressure transient behaviors for vertical wells in
low permeability reservoirs. We firstly proposed a correlation of
nonlinear function, and then we developed a fully implicit nu-
merical scheme to solve the nonlinear equation. Thirdly, buildup
pressure data of two vertical wells were interpreted to show cor-
rectness of the proposed correlation incorporating pseudo TPG.
Finally, sensitive studies were conducted.
310 D. Li et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 308–316

2. Corrected Darcy's law with pseudo TPG Table 1

Reservoir and fluid properties used in the synthetic example.
We propose a corrected Darcy's law as follow:
Name Value Unit
⎧ K⎛ ∇p ⎞
⎪ u = − ⎜ ∇p − λ pesudo⎟ ∇p > λ max Reservoir size 1000
1000 m2
⎪ μ ⎝ ∇p ⎠ Boundary condition No flow fraction
⎪ n
⎪ ⎛ ∇p − ∇ p λ ⎞ Initial pressure 20 MPa
⎪u = − ⎜ ∇ p min ⎟
λ max ≥ ∇p ≥ λ min
Reservoir thickness 10 m
⎨ ⎜ λ − λ min ⎟ Horizontal permeability 6 mD
⎪ ⎝ max ⎠ Porosity 0.2 fraction
⎪ K Rock compressibility 0.00015 1/MPa
⎪ (
λ max − λ pesudo ) Oil compressibility 0.002 1/MPa
⎪ μ
⎪ Viscosity 2 mPa.s
⎩u = 0 ∇p < λ min (3) Formation volume factor 1.05 fraction
Well Wellbore storage 0.2 m3/MPa
n
⎛ ∇ p − ∇ p λmin ⎞ Skin factor 5 fraction
where n is large than 1. We call α = ⎜⎜ λ ∇−pλ ⎟ decrease-factor
⎟ Well radius 0.1 m
⎝ max min ⎠
and call n nonlinear exponent.
Equ. (3) can be rearranged as
2πβKh
K⎛ ∇p ⎞ qsc = Jw (p − pwf ) − λ(re − rw )
u = − β ⎜ ∇p − λ⎟ Bμ (8)
μ⎝ ∇p ⎠ (4)
2πkhβ
Where Jw = ,p is bottom hole flowing pressure in Pa,
where μB ln(re / rw ) + S wf
re is equivalent well radius in m and rw is actual well radius in m.
⎧β=1 ∇p > λ max Let Q be the flow rate of a well at surface condition, and con-
⎪
⎪ n − 1 sidering wellbore storage C , the flow equation in the wellbore is
⎪
⎪β=
( ∇p
∇p − ∇ p λ min )
λ max ≥ ∇p ≥ λ min
given by:
⎨
⎪ ( λ max − λ min)n C n+ 1 n
⎪ qsc − (p − pwf )=Q
(λ max − λ pseudo) Δt wf (9)
⎪
⎪
⎩β=0 ∇p < λ min (5)

⎧ λ = λ pesudo ∇p > λ max 4. Equation discretization and linearization

⎨
⎩ λ = λ min λ max ≥ ∇p ≥ λ min
In this paper, we call β nonlinear factor.
3. Flow model
The major assumptions in this paper are: Corrected Darcy's law
of Eqs. (3) or (4) applies; Fluid and pore are slightly compressible;
Single-phase oil fluid flow is considered; Wellbore storage effect
and well skin are considered; It is a single layer reservoir.
In numerical simulation cases, we suppose that the reservoir is
horizontal. Therefore, gravity is neglected in the following math-
The numerical solution method is adopted here based on the
PEBI grids. The perpendicular bisection (PEBI) grids can overcome
the disadvantages of Cartesian grid, and have been used in many
fields, especially in numerical well test (Palagi and Aziz, 1991;
Pinzon et al., 2001; Nnadi and Onyekonwu, 2004; Alcalde and
Teufel, 2006).
In following derivation, we suppose the production or injection
rate is specified. Under this assumption, the pressure of every grid
and bottom hole flowing pressure for every well are variables.
Therefore, for grid i , using the control volume method, the dis-
cretized form of the flow Eq. (7) of fully implicit time is:
(v ) ⎛ (v ) (v ) ⎞ (v )

ematical derivation for concision. The following mass conservation ∑ T ijn++ 1⎜⎜ p jn + 1 − pin + 1 − dij(λ j − λ i)⎟⎟ + ∑ T ijn++ 1( δpj − δpi )
j ⎝ ⎠ j
equation is as following:
(v )
∂ ⎛ ∂Tij ⎞ n + 1⎛ (v) (v ) ⎞
⎜ p n + 1 − p n + 1 − d (λ − λ )⎟δp
−∇⋅ρu =
∂t
( ρϕ) + q¯ (6)
+ ∑ ⎜⎜ ⎟⎟
⎝ ∂p ⎠+ ⎝ ⎜ j i ij j i ⎟ +
j ⎠
3
where ρ is density in kg/m , u is the flow velocity in m/s and (v ) (v ) (v )

= C pn + 1δpi + C pn + 1(piv − pin ) + qscn + 1

defined by Eq. (4), ϕ is porosity in fraction, q̄ is the mass flow rate
(v )
of the well in kg/(m3 s). (v + 1 )
∂q n + 1
Substituting Eq. (4) into Eq. (6), using surface condition density + sc (pin + 1
∂pi
ρsc to divide the both sides of the equation, then rearranging
(v )
yields: − pin + 1 )
⎡ βk ⎛ ∇p ⎞⎤ ∂ ⎛ ϕ⎞ (v )
(v + 1 ), (v )
∇⋅⎢ ⎜ ∇p − λ⎟⎥ = ⎜ ⎟ + q ∂qscn + 1 n + 1
⎣ μB ⎝ ∇p ⎠⎦ ∂t ⎝ B ⎠ (7) + (p n +1)
− pwf
∂pwf wf (10)
where q = q/¯ ρsc in 1/s . (v + 1) (v ) (v )
Vi
⎡ (v ) ⎤
In the numerical model, we need to integrate the Eq. (7), and ∂(1 / B )
where δpi = pin + 1 − pin + 1, C pn + 1 = pi are the ⎢ 1 ∂ϕ + ϕ n+1 ⎥, p ,
Δt ⎢ Bn ∂p ∂p ⎥ j
let qsc = ∭ qdV , which is volume rate of the well at surface con- ⎣ ⎦
V
pressure of grid i and grid j , dij is distance between grid i and j , Vi
dition in m3/s. Considering the well skin S and pseudo TPG, we
have: is the volume of grid i ,Tij = ( )βkG
μoBo
ij
, G is the geometric factor of two
 D. Li et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 308–316 311

Fig. 2. Comparison of BHP between numerical solution and superposition principle for a vertical well with TPG of 0.05 MPa/m. Production time is 120 days with constant
flow rate of 5m3/day and shut-in time is 30 days. (a) Reservoir and gridding (b) Comparison of BHP.

( v) ⎛ 1⎞
Table 2 ∂⎜ ⎟
∂qsc n+1
∂Jsc ⎝ Bμ ⎠
Known parameters of field data one. 2πkhβ
∂pi
= ∂pi ( )
pi − pwf + Jw − 2πβKhλ(re − rw ) ∂p
, Jw = μB⎡⎣ ln(re / rw ) + S ⎤⎦
Name Value Units and subscript i means well grid, re is equivalent well radius in m
and rw is actual well radius in m.
Porosity 0.12 fraction Generally, several methods are available for linearizing pres-
Rock compressibility 5.885e  004 (1/MPa)
sure-dependent properties in single-phase-flow problems: the
Reservoir thickness 19.4 m
Wellbore radius 0.1 m explicit method, the simple-iteration method, and the fully-im-
viscosity 5.32 mPa s plicit method. Eqs. (10) and (11) are derived based on fully-implicit
Oil compressibility 0.000825 1/MPa linearization method, the more details are available in the book
Formation volume factor 1.05 fraction
(Ertekin et al., 2001).
Eqs. (10) and (11) with boundary and initial conditions con-
Table 3 stitute a well posed equation system, and BHP and pressure dis-
Matched parameters of case 1. tribution can be obtained by solving these equations.

Name Value Units

Reservoir dimensions 200
200 m 5. Validation

Boundary condition No flow fraction
Permeability of reservoir 0.6 mD 5.1. Validation without TPG
Initial pressure 23.26 Mpa
minimum TPG ( λ min ) 0 Mpa
Maximum TPG ( λ max ) 0.32 m3/kg
The validation without absolute TPG and pseudo TPG has been
Pseudo TPG ( λ pesudo ) 0.292 Mpa done in other papers (Li et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2014).
Well storage effect C 0.54 m3/Mpa
Skin 0 fraction 5.2. Validation with absolute TPG
Nonlinear exponent n 2 fraction
Our previous paper (Li et al., 2015) compared the numerical
solution with the solution based on superposition principle for a
adjacent grid, pwf is bottom hole flowing pressure in Pa, terns of
vertical well located in the center of a reservoir. Production time is
(v ) (v )
(v )
n+1
∂qsc
(v + 1) (v )
n+1
∂qsc
(v + 1), (v )
120 days with constant flow rate of 5 m3/day and shut-in time is
qscn + 1 + ∂pi
(pin + 1 − pin + 1) + ∂pwf
n+1
(pwf n+1
− pwf ) is the fully implicit 30 days. Table 1 gives the basic data.
linearization of Eq.(8), subscript + means upstream weight, n is old Fig. 2a gives the schematic of gridding. Fig. 2b gives the com-
time step, and n þ 1 is new time step, λ i and λj are the value of TPG parison of BHP during drawdown and buildup period. During the
in grid i and j respectively. Superscript v is iteration level. drawdown period, the two results have a good agreement, which
The fully implicit linearization of Eq. (9) is: shows the correctness of numerical solution.
The disagreement of BHP during buildup period shows that
( v) ⎛ ( v) ⎛
( v + 1) ( v) ⎞ ( v + 1) ( v) ⎞ superposition principle is not suitable to solve the model in-
∂qscn + 1 ⎜ n + 1 ⎟
n+ 1 + ∂q n+ 1 ⎜
sc n + 1 − p n + 1⎟
p − p p corporating the absolute TPG. The buildup pressure based on su-
∂pi ⎜⎜ i i ⎟
⎟ ∂pwf ⎜⎜ wf wf ⎟
⎟ perposition principle in Fig. 2b continues to increase after a shut-in
⎝ ⎠ ⎝ ⎠
time of 30 days. When the well is shut-in, the grids with small
( v + 1)
C n+ 1 pressure gradient should stop flowing quickly. Just like the closed
− (p
Δt wf boundary condition, the buildup pressure should stabilize quickly.
n
− pwf )=0 However, buildup pressure based on superposition principle still
(11)
increases after 30 days The erroneous result is caused by application
Where of superposition principle on the nonhomogeneous equation.
312 D. Li et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 308–316

10
10
9 field data
simulated data
8
1
pressure (MPa)

pressure (MPa)
7

0.1
6

5 field data
0.01 field data
simulated data
4
simulated data

3 1E-3

-2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 1E-3 0.01 0.1 1 10

time (day) time (day)

(a) Fitted buildup pressure history (b) Fitted pressure change and derivative
Fig. 3. Fitting of pressure history and pressure derivative of field data one. (a) Fitted buildup pressure history (b) Fitted pressure change and derivative.

Table 4 Because there is no widely accepted commercial software in-

Known parameters of case 2. corporating pseudo TPG, our code could not be validated further.
Name Value Units

Porosity 0.12 fraction

Rock Compressibility 5.885e  004 1/MPa 6. Field examples
Reservoir thickness 16.8 m
Wellbore radius 0.1 m
viscosity 2.35 mPa s
6.1. Field description
Oil Compressibility 0.000825 1/MPa
Formation volume factor 1.05 fraction The Hailaer Oilfield is located in northeastern China. Crude oil
in low permeability reservoirs is slightly light with a viscosity
ranging from 1.0 to 6.0 mPa s under reservoir conditions, de-
Table 5
Matched parameters of case 2. pending on the crude oil composition, solution gas content and
reservoir temperatures. The porosities range from 10% to 15%. The
Name Value Units formation thickness ranges from 6 m to 20 m. Permeability range
Reservoir dimensions 200
200 m is 1.5–0.001 mD. Rock compressibility is 0.0005885/MPa.
Boundary condition no flow fraction The pressure behaviors in the low permeability reservoir ex-
Permeability of reservoir 0.08 mD hibit a unique and consistent characteristic of the pressure tran-
Initial pressure 15.7 Mpa
sient response. The pressure derivative curves exhibit a straight
minimum TPG ( λ min ) 0 Mpa
Maximum TPG ( λ max ) 0.297 m3/kg line of slope larger than zero during med-late time, and the radial
Pseudo TPG ( λ pesudo ) 0.27 Mpa flow regime is very short. In order to interpret the parameters of
Well storage effect C 0.0048 m3/Mpa the reservoir better, long time buildup test is conducted. The water
Skin 2.2 fraction cut is less than 1% for the wells. Therefore, single oil phase is ap-
Nonlinear exponent n 2 fraction
plied during the field case study below.

Fig. 4. Fitting of pressure history and pressure derivative of case 2. (a) Fitted buildup pressure history (b) Fitted pressure change and derivative.
 D. Li et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 308–316
Fig. 5. Pressure transient response under min TPG of 0, 0.1, 0.2 MPa/m respectively when max TPG is 0.297 MPa/m and pseudo TPG is 0.27 MPa/m. (a) dp and dp′ of buildup
period (b) decrease-factor. (c) BHP during drawdown period and buildup period.
6.2. Field data one
The test operation comprised two stages: oil production at the
average rate of 0.98 m3/day for 120 days, followed by a shut-in
period of 15 days.
The input parameters are listed in Table 2. The matched para-
meters are listed in Table 3. Fig. 3a gives the fitted pressure history.
Fig. 3b gives the fitted curves of dp and dp′. During the inter-
pretation, we mainly adjust permeability, λ max and λ pesudo to fit the
measured data during med-late time under λ min ¼0.
The parameter matching process is as follows:
(1) Input the knows parameters as listed in Table 2;
(2) Determined the wellbore storage coefficient from the early time
response.
(3) Adjust permeability and well skin to match the pressure response
during radial flow regime. During this step, permeability and well
skin affect pressure derivative behavior during radial flow re-
gime. If the fitting is not good enough, go to step (2).
(4) Adjust maximum TPG ( λ max ) and pseudo TPG ( λ pesudo ) to match
the pressure response after radial flow regime. During this step,
λ max and λ pesudo are adjusted to match pressure response during
intermediate and late time. If the fitting is not good enough, go to
step (2).
We have tried many possibilities to interpret the field data to
313
study uniqueness of the interpretation. When the min TPG ( λ min ) is
small, for example, 0.0001 Mpa/m, min TPG has very small effect
on pressure transient response. Therefore, measured data cannot
guarantee the uniqueness of the interpreted min TPG ( λ min ).
However, when we try possibilities of λ max and λ pesudo to fit the
field data to study uniqueness of the interpretation, we find that
interpreted λ max and λ pesudo in Table 3 fit the field data best. The
good fitting result shows that the proposed Eq. (3) can descript the
flow behaviors in low permeability reservoirs.
6.3. Field data two
The test operation comprised two stages: oil production at the
average rate of 0.2 m3/day for 120 days, followed by a shut-in
period of 10 days.
The input parameters are listed in Table 4. The matched para-
meters are listed in Table 5. Fig. 4a shows the measured and si-
mulated buildup pressure. Fig. 4b gives the fitted curves of dp and
dp′.
We need to mention that flow behaviors in low permeability
reservoirs are correlated with the distribution of pore throat,
which leads to complex nonlinear function expression. The pro-
posed Eq. (3) cannot describe all flow behaviors in the low per-
meability reservoirs. During the buildup data interpretation, we
also find a few field data cannot be fitted well based on Eq. (3). In
fact, researchers have proposed many correlation of nonlinear
314 D. Li et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 308–316

Fig. 6. Pressure transient response under pseudo TPG of 0.02, 0.12, 0.22 MPa/m respectively when max TPG is 0.297 MPa/m and min TPG is zero. (a) Effect of pseudo TPG on
BHP (b) nonlinear factor β under different pseudo TPG. (c) dp and dp′ during buildup period.

function (Deng et al., 2001; Xiong et al., 2009; Shi et al., 2009).
Based on our experience of interpretation, the nonlinear function
expression would be different for different low permeability
reservoirs.
7. Sensitivity study
We use data in Tables 4 and 5 to conduct sensitivity study.
7.1. Effect of minimum TPG on pressure transient response
Fig. 5 gives the pressure transient response for min TPG of 0,
0.1 and 0.2 MPa/m respectively with pseudo TPG of 0.27 MPa/m
and max TPG of 0.297 MPa/m. Fig. 5a shows that larger min TPG
leads to smaller slopes of pressure derivative curves during med-
late time and smaller pressure change.
This can be explained from the decrease-factor of
n λ pseudo leads to smaller BHP. This can be explained from the non-
α= ( ∇ p − λmin
λmax − λmin ) as shown in Fig. 5b. Eq. (3) shows that when
decreases quickly, which leads to small slope of pressure deriva-
tive during med-late time.
When λ min is zero, flow exists if the ∇p is larger than zero.
Because the decrease-factor of α is much smaller than 1, the flow
speed is much smaller than the speed based on the Darcy's law
and longer time is required for flow to reach BHP stability.
Therefore, the pressure derivative is biggest during med-late time
for λ min = 0. From Fig. 5a, we can see that the slope of pressure
derivative for λ min = 0 is largest. Fig. 5c shows that smaller λ min
leads to higher BHP, which also can be explained by Fig. 5b.
7.2. Effect of pseudo TPG on pressure transient response
In order to investigate the effect of pseudo TPG on the pressure
transient response, Fig. 6 gives pressure transient response under
different pseudo TPG. Fig. 6a gives the BHP curves under pseudo
TPG ( λ pseudo ) of 0.02, 0.12, 0.22 MPa/m respectively under
λ max ¼0.297 Mpa/m and λ min ¼0Mpa/m, which shows that larger
( ∇ p − λmin)
linear factor β . Eq. (5), i.e. β =
n−1

n (λ − λ pseudo) shows that

∇p < λ min is satisfied, the decrease-factor α is zero, which means ( λmax − λmin) max
that no flow exists. Therefore, larger min TPG ( λ min ) means more when λ max ¼0.297 Mpa/m and λ min ¼0, the nonlinear factor de-
pressure loss and thus flow quickly reaches stability. The quick creases when λ pseudo increases, which is as shown in Fig. 6b. This
stability of flow means that the speed of pressure change means that the flow need to overcome more resistance when
 D. Li et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 308–316
Fig. 7. Effect of nonlinear exponent on pressure transient response. (a) decrease-factor α (b) nonlinear factor β . (c) dp, dp′ during first rate (d) dp, dp′ of buildup period.
λ pseudo is larger. Therefore, larger λ pseudo leads to smaller BHP.
Now it is easy to understand the behavior of pressure change
and pressure derivative in Fig. 6c. The effect of pseudo TPG on
pressure and derivative curves shows that the larger pseudo TPG
leads to larger pressure change and larger pressure derivative. The
physics of larger slope is that larger pseudo TPG leads to smaller
flow speed, and thus leads to larger pressure change and larger
pressure derivative.
We also can observe that different pressure derivative curves
are almost parallel after the appearance of radial flow for different
λ pseudo (Fig. 6c). This can be explained by Eq. (3) which shows that
when the value of λ pseudo is different, the flow speed changes
wholly when λ max ≥ ∇p ≥ λ min .
7.3. Effect of nonlinear exponent on pressure transient response
Fig. 7 gives the effect of nonlinear exponent on pressure tran-
sient response. From Eqs. (3) and (5), we know that decrease-
factor α and nonlinear factor β decrease with increase of nonlinear
exponent n, which is as shown in Fig. 7a and b. This means that
flow speed is smaller for larger nonlinear exponent n, which is the
reason that BHP is lower for larger nonlinear exponent n (Fig. 7c).
The increase trend of buildup pressure in Fig. 7c shows that the
increase speed of BHP is bigger for smaller nonlinear exponents,
which explains the larger slopes of pressure derivative curves for
smaller nonlinear exponents (Fig. 7d).
Comparing Fig. 6c with Fig. 7d, we can see the effect of pseudo
315
TPG and effect of nonlinear exponent n on pressure transient re-
sponse are a little different. The difference among slopes of pres-
sure derivative curves during the med-late time increases with
time for different nonlinear exponent n.
8. Conclusion
A mathematical single-phase flow model incorporating pseudo
TPG was proposed to describe the flow behavior in low perme-
ability reservoirs. The fully implicit numerical simulation based on
PEBI grid was developed to study the transient pressure response
for the vertical wells in oil reservoirs. Based on the field data,
parametric studies were conducted to investigate thee effect of
minimum TPG, pseudo TPG and nonlinear exponent on the pres-
sure transient response. Our findings would be as follows.
(1) Pseudo TPG can explain the unique and consistent character-
istic of the pressure transient response in low permeability
reservoirs, which is useful for petroleum engineers to inter-
pret the field data.
(2) The physics of upwarp of derivative curves is the lower flow
speed due to pseudo TPG.
(3) Although the proposed corrected Darcy's law was validated by
field data, the proposed model cannot describe all the flow
behaviors in the low permeability reservoirs. Based on our
experience of interpretation, the nonlinear function expression
would be different for different low permeability reservoirs.
316 D. Li et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 147 (2016) 308–316
Acknowledgements
This work was sponsored by CNPC-CAS Strategic Cooperation
Research Program (2015A-4812), National Key Science and Tech-
nology Project (2011ZX05009-006), and China Scholarship Coun-
cil, CAS Strategic Priority Research Program (XDB10030402).
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