Dr. Mohammed H. S.

Zangana

Department of Petroleum Engineering, Faculty of

Engineering, Koya University

RESERVOIR GAS FLOW

Determination of the inflow performance or reservoir flow capacity for a gas

well requires a relationship between flow rate coming into a well and the
sand-face pressure or flowing bottom-hole pressure. This relationship may be
established by the proper solution of Darcy's Law.

Darcy Law : describes the flow of a fluid through a porous medium. The law
was formulated by Henry Darcy based on the results of experiments on the
flow of water through beds of sand.

Henry Darcy

(1803-1858)

French

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 RESERVOIR GAS FLOW

Darcy's law is a proportional relationship between the discharge rate through

a porous medium, the viscosity of the fluid and the pressure drop over a given
distance.

or (4)

Where,

Flow Regime Characteristics

When a well is opened to production from a shut-in condition, the pressure

disturbance created at the well travels outward through the rock at a
velocity governed by the rock and fluid properties. With respect to the
behavior of this pressure disturbance a various flow regimes will occur.

•Steady-State Flow.

•Pseudo-Steady-State Flow.

•Unsteady-State Flow.

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 Flow Regime Characteristics

Steady-State Flow:
This type of the flow regime occurs when the flow across the external
drainage radius re, be equal to the flow across the well radius at rw .This is
can met in a strong water drive type reservoir, whereby the water influx
rate equals the producing rate.

Figure 5:Radial steady-state flow

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Flow Regime Characteristics

Pseudo-Steady-State Flow:
Pseudo-steady-state flow occurs in the reservoir after it has been
produced at a constant rate for a long enough period of time to cause a
constant change in pressure at all radii, resulting in parallel pressure
distributions and corresponding constant rate distributions. Pseudo
steady state flow is a specialized case of unsteady-state flow and is
sometimes referred to as stabilized flow. Most of the life of a reservoir will
exist in pseudo-steady-state flow.

dp/dt = constant

Figure 6: Unsteady & Pseudo-Steady State Flow

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 Flow Regime Characteristics

Unsteady-State Flow:
The unsteady-state flow is defined as the gas flowing condition at which the
rate of change of pressure with respect to time at any position in the reservoir
is not zero or constant.

Figure 7: Unsteady State Flow

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Thank You