Material Balance Calculations with Water Influx in the Presence of Uncertainty in Pressures CRs MeEWEN JUNIOR MEMBER AINE ABSTRACT This paper presents a technique for calculating the original amount of bydrocarbon in place in a petroleum reservoir, and for determining the con- stants characterizing the aquifer performance, based (on pressure-production data. A method for doing this based on aleast-squares line-fitting computation was proposed by vanE verdingen, Timmerman and McMabon in 1953, We found that their method would not work then there is error in the reservoir pressure data —~ even moderate error. The technique presented bere appears to give reasonable answers when pressure data are uncertain to the degree expected in reser- voir pressure determinations. The major change introduced in the present anal- ysis isto limit the least-squares line-fitting to yield only one constant — the amount of hydrocarbon in place. The water-influx constant is then taken @s proportional t0 the oil (or gas) in place. The con- Stant of proportionality can be computed rom esti- mates of effective compressibility and reservoir It is also pointed out that the commonly used least-squares analysis assumes all of the wncer- tainty t0 be in the dependent variable. The material balance should be arranged 20 that this condition is fulfilled if correct inferences are to be made from statistical calculations. Examples are shown of the application of the new technique to gas reservoirs—both hypothetical and real—and to the oilereservoir example of van Ever dingen, Timmerman and McMahon. INTRODUCTION ‘The amount of hydrocarbon originally in place in a petroleum reservoir can be estimated by means of the material-balance calculation. Simultaneous ob- servations of pressure and amounts of produced fluids are required, together with the PVT data applicable to the reservoir fluids. If water encroach- ment is occurring, it is desirable to try to infer the ‘Seis Revieed manoscriptrecetved March 1 1983, UNION OIL. CO. OF CALIFORNIA BREA, CALIF. 225 behavior of the aquifer, as well as the ori hydrocarbon in place, from the pressure-production data, This imposes additional demands on the method of calculation, and uncertainty in the date can result in large uncertainty in the aaswer. In addition, if the size of a gas cap is to be established, the whole problem becomes indeterminate, as pointed ‘out by Woods and Muskat.! Brownscombe and Col- lins? simulated a gas reservoir and its aquifer on a reservoir analyzer and derived quantitative infor- mation on the effect of uncertainty in pressure and aquifer permeability on computed gas in place. ‘Among the various techniques of estimating the performance of an aquifer, the method of van Ever ingen and Hurst3 based on compressible flow theory, seems to have been the most generally suc- cessful (sce Ref. 4, for example). In this paper we shall confine ourselves to their representation of the aquifer. In 1953, van Everdingen, Timmerman ‘and MeMahon’ introduced a statistical techaique for deriving the amoust of oil originally in place and the parameters which describe the aquifer. (We shall refer to this technique as the “VTM method”, as suggested by Mueller.®) Their example reservoir had no gas cap. Ie has been our experience that the VIM method gives a reasonable answer when the data are very accurate, but that inaccuracy (particularly in pres- sure) can cause the method to bresk down. The effect was first observed in gas reservoirs, but has since been seen in oil reservoirs also. In this paper we present another statistical method which has been successful in achieving a reasonable answer where the VIM method has failed. In the new metbod, one less parameter is derived from materia: balance computations. It is assumed that values can be established for effective compressibility in che aquifer and reservoir water saturation independently of the material balance calculation. The water influ constant can then be obtained from these data and the quantity of hydrocarbon in place ‘References elven at end of pn ey June. 1962 sociery ov rernoreem EXcINEERS JOURNALREVIEW OF MATERIAL-BALANCE COMPUTATIONS Material-balance computations, whether on oil or gas reservoirs, all contain three basic terms — (1) expansion, (2) withdrawals and (3) influx, A material- balance equation is a linear relation among these variables. Fot a gas reservoir a possible form for the material balance would be G(B,~ Bg) +¥, = GB, +W, Withdrawals). +a (Expansion) + (Influx) where G = original gas in place, Mscf, Gp = gas produced, Mscf, Bg = gas formation volume factor, reservoir BbI/Mscf, Bgi = gas formation volume factor at original pressure, We = water influx, reservoir bbl, and Wp = water produced, reservoir bbl. Similarly, for a saturated oil reservoir with 00 initial gas cap we would have N(By = By) + We = Np (By +(Ry ~R yg) Bgl + Wy beeen original oil in place, STB, oil produced, STB, total (ewo-phase) formation volume factor, reservoir bBI/STB, total formation volume factor at original pressure, Rp ~ cumulative (produced) gas-oil ratio, Mscf/STB, and che solution gas-oil ratio at the orig- inal pressure. ‘The van Everdingen and Hurst theory provides this means of computing influx. Wee BE QM eee eee eee ® where B = the water-influx constant, bbI/psi, Op = dimensionless water influx, D = teservoir pressure, Ap = an increment of the drawdowa, the lat- terbeing the difference between orig- inal and current reservoir pressure, and the summation siga signifies the application of the superposition principle. This is the summation of a oumber of different, constant drawdown solu- tions to the compressibleflow equation in order to permit a solution for the variable drawdown history of the reservoir under study. Besides B, a second parameter is required forthe computation of influx— the dimensionless time step Ap, corresponding to the eal time period between’ observations of pressure-production data. The theoretical coaver- ‘sion from zeal to dimensionless time requires values for aquifer permeability and porosity and reservoir radius, together with water viscosity and compres- bility. Reliable values, particularly of permea- bility, are difficult to get. Therefore, we resort to ‘obtaining the proper conversion by trial and error. In the VIM method, a set of material-balance computations was carried out for a fixed value of Ap. Then Atp was changed and another set made, ere, Each set of calculations produced values for N and B. The preferced set was the one which pro- duced a minimum standard de' in N. In effect, this amounts to trying different water-influx histo- ries until one is found which, combined with ex- pansion and withdrawals, gives the best approxima- tion to the chosen form of the material-balance ‘ia the preseat work the idea of tying the material balance for different values of Atp is tetained. Two changes are introduced, however: (1) the terms of che material-balance equation are rearranged; and (2) only the value for N (or G) is obtained by sta- tistical analysis. ASSIGNMENT OF VARIABLES In choosing a statistical technique for this prob- Jem, we can consider that we have three variables which are linearly related; i.e., Yay Hayat ate cee eee Oy In a gas-teservoir problem, for example, we might make the following assignment of variable: ~ Bg; (Expansion) , By + Wy (Withdrawals) and sy 2 OpAp (influx). The coefficients would then be aro, a, - V6 and a) = B/G. The so-called “normal equations” are used for obtaining values for the coefficients dg, 2, and a from a number of observations of the variables. The normal equations depend on the form of Eq. 4. There ‘will be one normal equation for each coefficient to be determined. The criterion most commonly used jn deriving the normal equations is that the coeffi- cients be the ones which produce a minimum in the sum of the squares of the differences (SSD) between observed y-values and those calculated from Eq. 4. In other words, the coefficients so calculated will be the ones giving a best fit in the least-squares sense over the range of the variables. ‘The normal equations for our example turn out to be the following. aExe st aQdxysgedayye eee ©)and : 2 Ly a ixpegtagis? - 2am —‘eoxmn a zine ‘onoze ‘202290 : ‘bonso7 ‘eo2tas 0 ‘potoo ‘ooze 2 ‘oor16 003730 a ‘boise? W627 ‘nous 7 ‘oonsot 16909 ‘oossss 5 ‘bo2061 1628 Na2e3 ‘boesoe 6 oases 156.78 seat ‘oorave ‘oor 7 ‘poses 1s120 ‘ooesoo ‘ooeeot % se ‘bogsot ¥ ize oh » aes r 0 011480 104.98 ‘ozone 01213 *° sonore 7306 ‘oaine 7273 ‘azwras 100 4256x108 031239 42.94. 10° 031039 (945697 42.81 108 aaat computations is 514 per cent. COMPUTING WITH THE WRONG VALUE OF B/G ‘The effect of using an incorrect value for B/G was studied by inserting values for compressibility different from the correct value for the hypothetical reservoir. Fig. 4 illustrates the result. A value for c which is below the correct value gives a minimum SSD, at a Ap above the correct value, and a value of ¢ above the correct one gives a Atp below the correct one. These exrors are compensating to a great degree insofar as the amount of water influx is concerned. In other words, the line-fitting tech- nique gives the best approximation to the true water- influx schedule, within the confines of the param- eters available. The values for gas in place chosen by the line- fitting method were not noticeably less accurate ‘when there was a 30 per cent error in the compres- ae FIG. 4—LINE-FITTING AT THREE DIFFERENT VAL- UES FOR COMPRESSIBILITY, PRESSURE HISTORY A (STANDARD DEVIATION = 20 PSD. sibility than when the exact valve was used, as can be seen from Table 6. APPLICATION OF METHOD TO AN EXISTING GAS RESERVOIR ‘A Gulf Coast gas reservoir has the pressure- production history given in Table 7. In addition, the following values were used: reservoit tempera- ture = 229°F, interstitial water saturstion = 27.8 per cent, compressibility (aquifer) = 6 x 10-5 atm-1, and a standard atmosphere contains 15.025 psi. Application of the line-fitting method (Fig. 5) produced a value for gas in place of 18( x 108 Mscf. ‘A volumetric estimate of gas in place was of the ‘order of 200 x 108 Mscf. APPLICATION TO AN OIL. RESERVOIR The material balance on the example oil reser voir used in the VIM paper was computed using the line-fitting method of this paper. In Eq. 10 the variables are defined as follows: x = Withdrawals term (Table 2, Part 1, Col. XIV of Ref, 4), and y = Expansion + Influx (Expansion term is Col. IV of same table and Influx = B/N 2Qp Ap ‘A value for B/N of 1.478 x 10-5 was computed from Eq. 17, using the following data: = = 6 x 10-5 atm, Boj = 1.5385 reservoir bbI/bbl ani S,, = 0.15. Fig. 6 shows the plot of SSD, vs Mp for this Cates AERTS Erkan be atiow m PmesORE 30 PS) (gener jeansA GULF COAST GAS RESERVOIR: q = terms roe mht | te ‘puis wen _ et é 2] : i 2.952420 e : 5.199568, 2 3 9.196910 = = 1.171529 * 2 1299520 wtg 3 -fo* 16,316950_ 1.0276 5 8 vr.867981, wear = 5 222070250 1.0780 3 i 8 TABLE & | __foImensionLess rime STEP, bp — Assumed Yolue tp ar Mine Nat Min. CJ oo ee ane ss o'r x 1075, (VTM) computed a value of N = 25.6 x 10® bbl at a ho® turned out to be 0.76 x 10-5, according to their concLusions Ie a In many cases a sufficiently accurate value for ° - L. It is a straight line through the origin. 10" 4 be 2. Its slope is 1/6 (or 1/8). 3. The uncertainty is isolaced in the dependent () variable. Least-squares line-fitsing can then be applied 50 as to infer these quantities from observations of pressure and production data: (1) G (or N), Eq. 1; tnd (2) Mp at minimum SSD, Eq. 12. NOMENCLATURE B = water influx constant; bbI/psi B,, = gas formation volune factor, reservoir bbl/ Mscf Bey = gas formation volume factor, reservoir bbl/ Mscf at original pressure B, = oil formation volume factor, reservoir bbl/ STB Bg4 = oil formation volume factor, reservoir bbI/ ‘STB at original pressure B, ~ total (two-phase) formation volume factor, i FIG, 6 — APPLICATION OF METHOD TO OIL RESER- ‘VOIR (VTM EXAMPLE). reservoir bbl/STB By « total (two-phase) formation volume factor, reservoir bbI/STB at original pressure fective aquifer fluid compressibility, atm” riginal gas in place, Mscf gas produced, Mscf reservoir thickness, fe eservoir pressure, psia dimensionless water influx cumulative (produced) gas-oil ratio, Mscf/ STB solution gas-oil ratio at original pressure reservoir radius, ft sum of squares of differences (between ob-served and calculated values of a varia- ble) SSD, = normalized value of SSD, obtained by divid- ing the SSD of a set of observations by the maximum value from the set water saturation of the reservoir before wa- tet influx, fraction Vp, = reservoir pore volume, bbl WG = water influx, reservoir bbl W, = water produced, reservoir bbl x = independent variable dependent variable 1228 deviation factor dimensionless time step porosity, fraction REFERENCES 1, Woods, R. W. and Muskat, M.: “Am Analysis of Mate- tial Balance Calculations", Trams., AIME (1945) Vol. 160, 124. | Stewart, F. M., Callaway, F. H. and Glaifelter, R.E. - Chat 2. Brownscombe, B. R. and Collins, F.: "Estimation of Reserves and Water Drive from Presste and Produc ton History", Trans., ADME (1949) Vol. 185, 92. van Bverdinges, A. F. and Hurst, W.: “The Application fof the Laplace Transformation to Flow Problems in Reservoirs”, Trans., AIME (1949) Vol. 186, 205. “Comparison of Methods for Analyzing Field, Torchlight Tensleep Reservoir Trans., ADME (1954) Vol. 201, 197. Water Drive Wyoming”, . van Everdingen, A. F., Timmerman, E, H. and MeMshon, J. Ju: "Application of the Material Balance Equation to ‘a Partiat Water-Drive Reservoir", Tvams., AUME, (1983) Vel. 198, 51. Mueller, . D.: "Transient Response ef Nonhomoge- neous Aquifers”, Soc. Pet Eng: Jour. (March, 1962) 33 7. van der Knaap, W.: “Nonlinear Behavior of Elastic Porous Media" Tras., AIME (1959) Vel. 216, 179. A. Tu: “A Practical Treatment of Nonsteady= Stato Flow Problems in Reservoir Systens”, Pet. Eng. Part 1 (May, 1983) B42; Part 2 Uune, 1053) B36, Part 3 (Auge, 1953) Bad. ‘The Rend Corps: A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, llinois Free Presa (1955).