THE PETROLEUM SOCIETY

PAPER 99-30

Analysis of Well Testing in an Oil Sand Reservoir

R.C.K. Wong, Y. Li
University of Calgary

K.C. Yeung
Suncor Energy Inc.

This paper is to be presented at the 1999 CSPG and Petroleum Society Joint Convention, Digging Deeper, Finding a Better Bottom Line, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, June 14 18, 1999. Discussion of this paper is invited and may be presented at the meeting if filed in writing with the technical program chairman prior to the conclusion of the meeting. This paper and any discussion filed will be considered for publication in Petroleum Society journals. Publication rights are reserved. This is a pre-print and subject to correction.

ABSTRACT Pressure transient testing techniques such as pressure buildup, pressure drawdown, and constant rate injection have been used in petroleum industry for well performance evaluation and reservoir characterization. Conventional method of analysis usually assumes that permeability and compressibility of the reservoir formation are constant or a function of pore pressure. This assumption has limitations when applied to an oil sands reservoir because of the unconsolidated deformable nature of oil sands. Three injection tests were conducted in an oil sands reservoir at a depth of about 500 m. History matching of the field injection data using a fully coupled reservoir-geomechanical simulator demonstrates that the permeability and compressibility of oil sands are interrelated and effective stress dependent. INTRODUCTION

The basic principle of pressure transient testing techniques, which are prevalent in petroleum industry, is to create and observe changing wellbore pressures. Appropriate and comprehensive interpretation of recorded well testing data provides information into reservoir properties such as permeability and compressibility. Conventional analysis is based on the principle of mass conservation, assuming that the permeability, porosity and compressibility of fluid are dependent on the pore pressure only. This simplified assumption has limitations when applied to an oil sands reservoir because oil sands will deform subjected to fluid injection and withdrawal, thereby causing changes in pore pressure and total stresses. Therefore, in order to interpret the well testing data in oil sands reservoir, coupled diffusion-deformation analysis, which considers the principle of mass conservation and equilibrium, should be used.1,2,3 In this paper, a history matching of the pore pressure responses of three injection tests in an oil sands reservoir was carried out using a fully coupled reservoir-geomechanical

simulator. This exercise provides some estimate on the flow (permeability) and deformation response of oil sands subjected to water injection. INJECTION TESTS Three injection tests were conducted in a cased well at Burnt Lake, Alberta. The well was completed with a diameter of 178 mm. The perforation zone is 5 m in the middle of the oil sands layer, which is 21 m thick, and has an overburden of 505 m. The overlying and underlying formations of the oil sands layer can be considered impermeable because it is capped and underlain by shale layers of 3 to 5 m. The oil sands layer has an initial pore pressure of 3.3 MPa and its in situ porosity is 33%. The void ratio of oil sands layer is 0.4893, which is the ratio of the volume of void to the volume of solid. In each test, cold water was injected into the oil sands formation through the tubing at a controlled rate for some interval, and then the well was shut in allowing the bottom hole pressure to decay to its initial in situ state. The bottom hole pressure was monitored during the injection and shut-in periods. The injection rate was increased from test 1 to test 3. The injection rates of three tests are presented in Figure 1. The bottom hole pressures monitored during the well testing are shown in Figure 3. FULLY COUPLED MODEL A fully coupled reservoir-geomechanical simulator ABAQUS was used in this study to carry out the history matching analysis of the injection tests. The simulator solves the equilibrium and continuity equations simultaneously in each time increment using finite element method to model the single-phase, fully saturated fluid flow through porous media. The porous medium theory applied in ABAQUS is based on the conventional effective stress principle, with compressibilities of solid grain and fluid phases allowed in the continuity equations. Displacements and pore pressure are calculated at each node of all finite elements. The total stresses are back calculated using the constitutive law and principle of effective stress.4
4

In the simulation, axisymmetric elements were used, assuming radial flow in the homogeneous oil sands layer. Figure 2 shows the configuration of reservoir model. The finite element model contains 2459 nodes and 780 elements. All nodes along the right vertical boundary and left vertical boundary are allowed to move vertically only. The nodes at the bottom base are restrained to any displacements. The top boundary surface is free to deform. Initial constant pore pressure (3.3 MPa for test 1, 3.75 MPa for test 2, 3.8 MPa for test 3) are maintained at the nodes of elements in the oil sands layer on the right vertical boundary. The no flow condition is applied to the nodes of elements at the top and bottom of the oil sands layer. The injection rate is imposed to the corresponding sides of elements in the perforation zone at the wellbore. In this paper, the overburden and underburden are assumed to be linear elastic with Youngs modulus, E = 1 GPa and Poissons ratio, = 0.3. They are assumed to be impermeable so that no injected water will diffuse into these formations. Porous non-linear elastic model is applied to simulate the oil sands behavior,

p ln( 0 ) = v (1 + e0 ) p
where, = logarithmic bulk modulus e 0 = initial void ratio

(1)

p 0 = initial value of mean effective stress p = mean effective stress v = volumetric strain Equation (1) states that the volume change of the oil sands is dependent on the effective stress instead of pore pressure only. Base on the experimental data5, the value of lies in a range of 0.012 0.024. Figure 4 shows the void ratio versus effective stress and porosity versus effective stress relationships for e0 = 0.4893, p0 = 7 MPa, = 0.012 and 0.024. The porosity increases with decreasing effective stress.

The bitumen in oil sands is relatively immobile as compared to water because of its low viscosity of 30,000 cp at reservoir temperature of 12 C. Hence, it is assumed that the flow occurred during injection tests is a singlephase water flow. The effective permeability to water of oil sands as a function of void ratio (or porosity) is assumed to follow the laboratory data5, and shown in Figure 5. It is shown that there is a significant increase in permeability when void ratio exceeds 0.61 (or porosity exceeds 0.38). The simulation procedure involves two steps: (1) applying in situ stresses to the formation, and (2) injecting water in the perforation zone. The total in situ stresses are assumed to be isotropic. ANALYSIS RESULTS The objective of history matching analysis is to determine a set of oil sands properties which will match the pore pressure responses monitored during the injection tests. It has been shown6 that the pore pressure responses are sensitive to the bulk compressibility and permeability. Different combination of bulk compressibility and permeability will yield different pore pressure results. The bulk compressibility is defined as the reciprocal of the bulk modulus. The logarithmic bulk modulus = 0.012 and laboratory data of permeability shown in Figure 5 are used as input parameters for the base case study. Then, the relationships (void ratio versus permeability and volume change versus effective stress) are varied to match the pore pressure responses. Based on the work by Wong et al,5 the range of bulk modulus is narrower than the range of effective permeability to water if there is no shear dilation induced. The effective permeability value could vary within an order of magnitude, depending on the reservoir quality of the test specimen. Hence, the logarithmic bulk modulus is limited to a range of 0.012 0.024, whereas the permeability value is varied until a reasonable match is achieved. Figure 3 compares the pore pressures monitored in the three injection tests and obtained from the simulation calculations. A same logarithmic bulk modulus ( =
o

0.024) was used in the simulations. However, two different relationships of permeability versus void ratio, which are shown in Figure 5, were required to be input in the simulations to give good matching. Based on the laboratory data5, in order to have a good matching in the pore pressure buildup phase, the effective permeability value has to be increased. Matching the pore pressure decay portion requires to decrease the in situ effective permeability. To have an overall good matching, the effective permeability values used in the simulations are much higher than the laboratory values. The effective permeability values have to be increased if low logarithmic bulk modulus ( = 0.012) is used. This discrepancy between the simulation and laboratory values might be due to the difference in bitumen saturation in the reservoir formation and test specimen. It is also found that the effective permeability values used in simulation of low injection rate tests 1 and 2 are higher than those used in high injection rate test 3. It could be attributed to the fact that some of bitumen might be displaced by high rate injection and the total mobility be decreased. Simulation results of three tests on development of the total and effective radial, tangential and vertical stresses at the wellbore are plotted in Figures 6 and 7, respectively. From Figure 6, the total stresses increase during injection. The higher the injection rate is, the larger the changes in total stresses are. In high injection rate test 3, the total radial stress becomes the minor principal stress. The increase in total radial stress is about 2 MPa. This implies that the injection pressure could be higher than the initial in situ confining stress without causing fracturing because of the increase of total stress. From Figure 7, the effective stress decreases during the injection period and rebounds to its initial values during the shut-in period. The effective radial stress has a minimum value of 1.9 MPa in test 3. The void ratio interpolated from the relationship shown in Figure 3 is about 0.52, which is the maximum void ratio induced in the three injection tests. It can be inferred from Figure 5, the maximum effective permeability induced in test 3 is

about 8.7 md. This interpretation suggests that the high rate injection does not cause significant volume dilation and thus the permeability enhancement. When the effective confining stress is reduced to values lower than 1 MPa, the void ratio increases at a larger rate and significant dilation may occur. Additional simulations were conducted to investigate the effect of bulk modulus and permeability on the pore pressure, total and effective stresses at the wellbore. The results are shown in Figures 8 to 10. In general, decreases in bulk compressibility and permeability values cause increase in pore pressure and total stresses. However, the changes in effective stresses are less significant than the changes in total stresses and pore pressure because the net effect is reduced.

The model considering multi-phase flow would be required under the condition of high rate injection which would induce bitumen movement. In addition, shear dilation mechanism should be considered in the simulation if high pressure injection is used. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors wish to acknowledge financial and technical supports provided by Alberta Department of Energy (ADOE) and Suncor Energy Inc. REFERENCE 1. 2. M.A. Biot, General theory of three-dimensional consolidation, J. Appli. Phys., 12, 155-164, 1941. K. Terzaghi, Theoretical soil mechanics, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1943. Y. Li, R.C.K. Wong and K.C. Yeung, Analysis of transient pressure response near a horizontal well a coupled diffusion-deformation approach, SPE 50385, 1998 SPE International Conference on Horizontal Well Technology, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, November, 1998. ABAQUS/Standard, Users manual, Version 5.5, Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc., 1995. R.C.K. Wong, W.E. Barr, N.M. To and R. Paul, Stand-up times of Athabasca oil sands in the bore hole mining process, Proc. of the 44th Canadian Geotechnical Conference, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Vol. 2, 57.1-57.3, 1991. J. Hasubek, Poroelastic analysis in tunnel and well testing, MSc. Thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, 1998.

CONCLUSIONS From the numerical simulation of 3 injection tests in oil sands reservoir, following conclusions can be drawn. The injection induces increases in pore pressure and total stress. It is necessary to use coupled reservoir-geomechanical model to analyze well testing data. The pressure response near the wellbore is sensitive to porous elastic properties and permeability. To achieve a good matching of field data, non-linear relationships among void ratio, permeability and effective stress must be used in the simulation. Due to the increase of total stresses during injection, it may be possible to increase injection pressure exceeding the initial overburden stress without causing fracturing.

3.

4. 5.

6.

30 test 1 25 test 2

/day)

20

test 3

Injection rate (m

15

10

0 0 10 20 30
Time (Hour)

40

50

60

Figure 1. Injection rates

wellbore

Overburden layer

505m

Perforat ion zone, 5m Oil sands layer vertical Underburden layer tangential radial 500m 100m 21m

Figure 2. Configuration of reservoir model

Figure 3. History matching of pressure responses

Figure 4. Void ratio (porosity) versus effective stress

Figure 5. Permeability versus void ratio

Figure 6. Total stress development

Figure 7. Effective stress development

Figure 8. Effect of bulk modulus and permeability on pore pressure

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Figure 9. Effect of bulk modulus and permeability on total stress

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Figure 10. Effect of bulk modulus and permeability on effective stress

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