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Part 1.
Write a report documenting “Material Balance Time” Concept. Use and refer to the following reading sources:
1. Thesis J.L. Johnston (1992)
2. Paper J.C. Palacio dan T.A. Blasingame (SPE 25909)
3. Paper L.E. Doublet et al. (SPE 28688).
Part 2.
Derive the solution of the following radial flow gas diffusivity equation (in terms of normalized pseudopressure) for
boundary-dominated flow condition:
1 pp 1 ct pp
r = (field units) .............................................................................................. (1)
r r r 0.00633 k t
dVp dVp
qres = or q g Bg = .......................................................................................................................... (2)
dt dt
pp (rw , t ) = ppwf [ppwf = constant (constant bottomhole pressure case)] ...................................... (3)
pp
r =0 ["No Flow" at the Outer Boundary]................................................................... (4)
r re
Your task is to find the solution to the above Eq. (1) using boundary conditions stated in Eqs. (2), (3), (4) so that the
solution you get is in the following form (see the given reference for help):
Show all of your steps and all terms in your derivation in detail.
The material balance time is the ratio of current cumulative production and daily flow rate, which could be
described as tc = Np/q. The equivalent relationship between producing with a constant and variable rate could be
built. Once the pressure wave spreads to the boundary, the fluid flow will enter into the boundary-dominated
flow period, and the flow rate is completely dictated by the elastic expansion of fluid and rock due to the reservoir
pressure depletion.
The most important characteristic is that this relation disscussed is always valid regardless of time, flow
regime, or production scenario whether the well experiences constant or variable flowing bottomhole pressures,
or constant or variable flowrate. This is due to the fact that Equation discussed here is derived directly from
material balance relations and is exact. It has been shown that for a constant production rate of single-phase
liquid.
The only difference between tcDd and Fetkovich dimensionless decline time tDd is that the production
time t is replaced by the material balance time tc. Since the Fetkovich method is valid under the assumption that
the reservoir shape is circular. However, in the process of calculating, Fetkovich choose an offset of ½ instead of
¾ because he proved that the former could lead to better correlation of qDd-tDd trends.
The Fetkovich type curves are applicable to wells that produce at constant bottomhole pressure. Many wells,
particularly gas wells, experience a decline in bottomhole pressure during their life. Blasingame and his
students/co- workers (McCray, Palacio) developed a time-function that enables the matching of production rate
data on Fetkovich typecurves, even when the flowing pressure is varying. After developing different time
functions, they came up with a simple function they called "material balance time" which works very well when
the change in bottomhole pressure is smooth, as is often the case in production operations. They, and Agarwal-
Gardner et al., also demonstrated that using material balance time converts the constant pressure solution into
the constant rate solution, which is the solution widely used in the field of well testing. Conceptually, the
material balance time is defined as the ratio of cumulative production to instantaneous rate:
The symbol tc has been adopted as it represents a corrected time based on cumulative production. It is also
similar to the corrected "Horner" time that is used in build-up analysis in well testing, for correcting the effect of
a varying flow rate.
Figure 1 – Material Balance Time
It is the value of time that a well would have to flow at the current rate in order to produce the same amount
of fluid (and hence honour the material balance principle). In the illustration below, the cumulative production
is represented by the area under the graph. The definition of material balance time is such as to make these areas
the same.
Derivation of material balance time for slightly compressible systems focuses on the flow of liquids, and
does not address the pseudo-time issues for gas reservoirs. It is fundamental to two basic ideas, namely the
equivalence of constant pressure and constant rate solutions, and the harmonic stem of decline curves. Material
balance pseudo- time for gas accounts for changing pressure-volume-temperature (PVT) properties with
reservoir pressure.
Consider an oil reservoir. A comparison of the constant rate (declining pressure) and constant pressure
(declining rate) typecurves obtained when plotting against dimensionless time (based on area) illustrates the
equivalence of the two solutions during the transient period, and their divergence during boundary dominated
flow. This is shown in the following figure:
Figure 2 – Comparison of constant rate & constant BHP Liquid Production Data
As it turns out, material balance time also normalizes production histories in which both the rate and the
pressure decline, provided that both sets of data decline monotonically.
Another way to state the functionality of material balance time is to say that it is effective in normalizing
any rate / pressure history (so that it looks like the constant rate solution), provided that the rate / pressure history
does not contain any disturbances large enough to disrupt boundary dominated flow. A disturbance that is large
enough to disrupt boundary dominated flow, such as a sudden (and significant) decrease in back pressure, would
introduce a new transient flow period. Since material balance time is designed to normalize boundary dominated
flow only, it would lose its effectiveness if a new transient were introduced.
When the same typecurves (in Figure 1) are plotted against dimensionless material balance time, the late
time portion of the constant pressure overlays the constant rate solution precisely. This is an important result
because it illustrates that the same diagnostic plots used in pressure transient analysis can be inverted and used
for rate transient analysis, provided that the material balance time function is used.
Figure 3 – Converting constant rate & constant BHP Data to equivalent constant rate liquid data
From the above figure it can be seen that the inverse logarithmic derivative behaves very similarly to the
logarithmic derivative on a welltest typecurve. During transient (radial) flow, it has a constant value of 2 (1 divided
by ½). Upon reaching boundary dominated flow, the inverse logarithmic derivative falls off with a constant slope
of 1 on the log-log plot. The primary pressure derivative has the opposite behaviour to the inverse log derivative,
in that it exhibits a slope of negative 1 during transient flow, and becomes constant during boundary dominated
flow. This follows from the fact that the pressure decline for a well produced at a constant rate has a constant
slope on log-log paper, during pseudo-steady state.
The 1/pD (qD) data, for different combinations of re/rw, exhibit a fan of transient stems which converge into
one harmonic depletion stem when plotted against dimensionless time based on area. If the data are plotted against
a dimensionless time based on effective wellbore radius rather than reservoir area, the transient stems merge
together while the depletion stems fan out.
The main difference in appearance between Agarwal-Gardner (A-G) typecurves and Fetkovich typecurves
is that the depletion stems for A-G typecurves all collapse to the harmonic case. This follows from the fact that
the A-G typecurve normalizes all rate and pressure solutions, so that they behave like the constant rate solution
for slightly compressible fluids. Figure 3 shows the A-G typecurves for a vertical, unfractured well.
Figure 4 – Agarawal-Gardner Rate-Time Typecurve
The presence of the inverse log derivative and pressure derivative plots on the A-G typecurve aids in the
identification of transient and boundary dominated flow regimes, in the same way that the logarithmic pressure
derivative aids in flow regime identification on welltest typecurves.
The following development (see Palacio and Blasingame, 1993) applies rigorously to a system with constant
compressibility, such as an undersaturated oil reservoir. Using the definition of compressibility, the oil production
from a reservoir is related to the drop in average reservoir pressure, as follows:
Separating the variables and integrating:
Recognizing that the left side is the cumulative oil production, the average reservoir pressure can be calculated
from:
The important characteristic of Equation (3a) is that it is always valid - regardless of time, flow regime or
production scenario (constant or variable flow rate). This is because Equation (3a) is a material balance equation.
Note that if p is plotted vs. Np, then a straight line of slope 1/Nct and intercept pi is obtained. Of course, p
is typically not available in practice, so we must use an alternate approach to applying this concept. Before doing
so, we recast Equation (3a) by including the definition of tc, as in Equation (1a):
The second equation to be used is the steady state solution for single-phase liquid flow in a rectangular
reservoir containing a vertical well:
Although Equation (4) was derived for constant rate (variable pwf), Blasingame and Lee (1986) showed that
it is also valid when the bottomhole pressure is constant (variable rate). Combining the material balance Equation
(3b) and the steady state flow Equation (4) gives:
where:
and
Equation (5), called the pseudo-steady state equation, suggests that a plot of Δp / q as a function of material
balance time will yield a straight line. If we assume q is constant, then Equation (5) reduces to:
and a plot of ∆p vs tc yields a straight line.
Blasingame and Lee state that the importance of Equation (5) is that it is also valid for moderately changing
flow rate and bottomhole pressure conditions, so long as the transients caused by the changing inner boundary
condition do not obscure the boundary dominated flow behaviour. In particular, Equation (5) is directly related
to two concepts - the equivalence of the constant pressure and constant rate solutions, and the harmonic stem
of decline curves.
Meunier et al. (1987) developed the well analysis method under a normalized pseudo-pressure and pseudo-
time. The advantage of this method is that the pseudo-pressure has the same dimension with real pressure; thus,
all equations in oil well analysis could be introduced into gas well analysis.
The application of material balance time to gas is more complex than it is to oil because of the varying PVT
properties of gas. Accordingly, the simple concept of material balance time given by:
It has limited application and is considered to be only an approximation of the more rigorous formulation,
which must be defined in terms of pseudo-time, ta. Material balance pseudo-time, tca, is defined as follows:
Equation (6) can be coupled with the steady state flow equation for the flow of single-phase gas, (which is
the gas equivalent of Equation (4) of this section), to give:
where:
and
3.1 Total Compressibility
The definition of material balance pseudo-time described in Equation (6) accounts only for the
compressibility of gas. This is often a reasonable approximation as gas compressibility is typically much
larger than that of liquid or rock. However, in some cases, the compressibilities of other fluids cannot be
ignored. Thus, we require a more general definition of pseudo-time that accounts for the total system
compressibility. Total compressibility includes gas compressibility as well as water influx and production,
formation and residual fluids compressibilities, and gas desorption.
Refer to Material Balance Analysis Theory - Gas Material Balance for the general gas material balance
equation. The general gas material balance equation can be expanded to include water influx and production,
formation and residual fluids compressibilities, and desorption of gas (∆Vwip, ∆Vep and ∆Vd, respectively)
as follows:
where:
The relative change of the pore volume due to water influx and production, formation and residual fluid
expansion, and desorption of gas (cwip, cep and cd, respectively), can then be defined as:
If the Adsorption Saturation correction has been enabled, cd is modified as follows:
The solution for total compressibility comes from the definition of pseudo-time:
By taking the partial derivative of pseudo-time with respect to time, total compressibility is exposed:
Note that the inclusion of a permeability term in the above definition of pseudo-time accounts for a pressure-
dependent permeability. Further detail can be found in the theory and equations of the Geomechanical Model.
Defining pseudo-pressure:
3. Solving for ∂p / ∂t
Dividing both sides of Equation (9) by (Gf Bgi / Sgi) and recalling that Bg = (psc Z T) / (Tsc P):
Letting c equal the summation of cwip, cep, and cd; and rearranging:
4. Substitution
Equations (12), (13) and (16) are substituted into the chain rule of derivatives from Equation (11) and
simplified:
Therefore, the total compressibility for Material Balance Pseudo-Time for Gas can be solved by the equation
above.
Part 2.
Derive the solution of the following radial flow gas diffusivity equation (in terms of normalized pseudopressure) for
boundary-dominated flow condition:
1 pp 1 ct pp
r = (field units) .............................................................................................. (1)
r r r 0.00633 k t
dVp dVp
qres = or q g Bg = .......................................................................................................................... (2)
dt dt
pp (rw , t ) = ppwf [ppwf = constant (constant bottomhole pressure case)] ...................................... (3)
pp
r =0 ["No Flow" at the Outer Boundary]................................................................... (4)
r re
Your task is to find the solution to the above Eq. (1) using boundary conditions stated in Eqs. (2), (3), (4) so that the
solution you get is in the following form (see the given reference for help):
Show all of your steps and all terms in your derivation in detail.
Blasingame, T.A., J.L. Johnston, and W.J. Lee. "Type-Curve Analysis Using the Pressure Integral
Method." SPE Paper 18799 Prepared for Presentation at the SPE California Regional Meeting. Bakersfield,
CA. 5-7 April, 1989.
Doublet, L.E., P.K. Pande, T.J. McCollum, and T.A. Blasingame. "Decline Curve Analysis Using Type
Curves - Analysis of Oil Well Production Data Using Material Balance Time: Application to Field Cases."
SPE Paper 28688 Prepared for Presentation at the 1994 Petroleum Conference and Exhibition of Mexico.
Veracruz, Mexico. 10-13 October, 1994.
Palacio, J.C., and T.A. Blasingame. "Decline-Curve Analysis Using Type Curves - Analysis of Gas Well
Production Data." SPE Paper 25909 (Pre-Print) Prepared for Presentation at the 1993 SPE Joint
Rocky Mountain Regional and Low Permeability Reservoirs Symposium. Denver, CO. 25-28 April,
1993.
Ansah, J. 1996. Production Rate and Cumulative Production Models for Advanced Decline Curve
Analysis of Gas Reservoirs. PhD Dissertation, Texas A&M U., College Station, Texas.