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Comparison of Simulation Methods in Gas

Condensate Reservoirs
a b c
M. Ahmadi , M. Sharifi & A. Hashemi
a
CO2-EOR Department, IOR Research Institute , National Iranian Oil
Company , Tehran , Iran
b
Petroleum Engineering , University of Tulsa , Tulsa , OK , USA
c
Petroleum Engineering Department , Petroleum University of
Technology , Tehran , Iran
Published online: 14 Feb 2014.

To cite this article: M. Ahmadi , M. Sharifi & A. Hashemi (2014) Comparison of Simulation
Methods in Gas Condensate Reservoirs, Petroleum Science and Technology, 32:7, 761-771, DOI:
10.1080/10916466.2011.604063

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 Petroleum Science and Technology, 32:761–771, 2014
Copyright 
C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1091-6466 print / 1532-2459 online
DOI: 10.1080/10916466.2011.604063

Comparison of Simulation Methods in Gas

Condensate Reservoirs

M. Ahmadi,1 M. Sharifi,2 and A. Hashemi3

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1
CO2 -EOR Department, IOR Research Institute, National Iranian Oil Company, Tehran, Iran
2
Petroleum Engineering, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, USA
3
Petroleum Engineering Department, Petroleum University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Formation of condensate bank around a gas condensate well due to reduction in bottom-hole pressure
below its dew point will impose a significant reduction on the well productivity owing to a sharp fall in
the gas effective permeability. Hence a better understanding and modeling of this behavior will lead to
a more precise prediction of reservoir performance. Therefore the objective of this work was to make
a comparison between different simulation methods of gas condensate reservoirs in order to check the
validity of them respect to the most accurate one (i.e., fine grid) fully compositional model. This study
shows that the modified black oil model would be adequate to simulate depletion cases above and below
gas condensate dew point. However, the two phase pseudo-pressure method is not always applicable in
simulating gas condensate reservoirs especially in the presence of high velocity flow effects.
Keywords: black oil simulation, capillary number, compositional simulation, gas condensate, two phase
pseudo pressure

1. INTRODUCTION

When we compare dry gas reservoirs with gas condensate reservoirs, there are many special factors
that affect the performance of gas condensate reservoir during the exploitation process. At the time of
discovery, a typical gas condensate reservoir pressure might be above or close to the critical pressure.
At this time there exists only single phase gas. However, as the production is carried out, there would
be an isothermal pressure decline, which pushes the bottom hole pressure in a flowing well to
fall below the dew point of the fluid resulting in a liquid hydrocarbon formation. This retrograde
condensate formation, resulting in a build-up of a liquid phase around the wellbore, leading to a
decrease in the effective permeability to gas into the wellbore. This productivity loss associated
with condensate buildup can be substantial. The liquid dropout first occurs near the wellbore and
propagates radially away from the well (assuming the well at the center of a radial reservoir) along
with the pressure drop.
Fevang (1995) and Ali et al. (1997) showed that when reservoir pressure around a well drops below
the dew-point pressure, retrograde condensation occurs and three regions are created with different
liquid saturations. Away from the well, an outer region has the initial liquid saturation; next, there is
an intermediate region with a rapid increase in liquid saturation and a corresponding decrease in gas

Address correspondence to M. Ahmadi, EOR Research Institute, Tehran 1969813771, Iran. E-mail: ahmadi.mhmd@
gmail.com
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/lpet.

761
 762 M. AHMADI ET AL.

relative permeability. Liquid saturation in that region is less than the critical condensate saturation
and hence is immobile. Closer to the well, an inner region forms where the liquid saturation reaches
a critical value, and the effluent travels as two phase flow with constant composition toward the well.
According to Economides et al. (1987) and Fussel (1973) there may also exist a fourth region in
the immediate vicinity of the well where low interfacial tensions (IFT) at high rates yield a decrease
of the liquid saturation and an increase of the gas relative permeability. Understanding the multiphase
flow phenomena in such reservoirs is a key in characterizing the condensate dropout and subsequent
blockage effect. In the retrograde condensate region, the interfacial tension between the gas and
the condensed phase is very small. Hence, it is expected that the capillary forces, which are the
major factors governing multiphase flow behavior in reservoirs, play a less important role relative
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to both gravity and viscous (shear) forces. Simulation of this complex behavior usually needs fine
grid fully compositional simulation, which is time-consuming and expensive. Researchers tried to
find a solution for this problem, in order to reduce run time of simulation and consequently its cost,
especially in the case of full field reservoir simulations.
Fevang (1995) presented “two phase pseudo pressure method (GPP)” in order to reduce rum time
of simulation. According to this method, there is no need to use fine grid fully compositional model
to accurately model the effect of condensate bank on well productivity. This means that coarse grid
models can be used instead of fine grid model but with good accuracy. They presented a gas rate flow
equation for gas condensate systems, which employs a pseudo pressure function as a mechanism to
account for the effect of condensate banking. Their result is given by Eqs. (1) to (3):

• A compositional formulation

(1)
• A black oil PVT formulation

(2)
Where

(3)

Where a = 1/ (2π 141.2) for field units and a1 = 1 for pure SI units.
B, Kr , M, μ, and ρ are formation volume factor, relative permeability, molecular weight, viscosity,
and density of each phase, respectively. PR , Pwf , Psc , Tsc , Rs ,, re , rw , and s represent reservoir and
bottom-hole flowing pressure, standard condition pressure and temperature, solution gas-oil ratio,
reservoir and wellbore radius, and skin factor, respectively. In practice and before GPP method,
most of reservoir engineers preferred using black oil simulation. But due to complexity of gas
condensate behavior, the black oil model is not able to precisely simulate this behavior. The term
black oil means that oil is treated as a single component with no interaction with the gas or
water phase. These models are capable of simulating performance under depletion, gas or water
injection, water influx, and oil displacement by movement of gas/oil or oil/water contacts. However,
gas condensate reservoirs exhibit a complex thermodynamic behavior that cannot be described by
simple pressure dependent functional relations, as the fluid composition changes continuously during
 SIMULATION METHODS IN GAS CONDENSATE RESERVOIRS 763

production by natural depletion, or by cycling above and below dew point pressures (Izgec et al.,
2005). Researchers tried to modify this method to get more reliable and accurate results. Finally in
1973, Spivak and Dixon introduced the modified black oil (MBO) simulation approach. The main
difference between MBO and conventional black oil simulation (BO) is the treatment of liquid in
the gas phase. It means that in MBO method the liquid can exist in both gas and liquid phases
under reservoir conditions. It assumes that the liquid content of the gas phase can be defined as a
sole function of pressure called vaporized oil-gas ratio, Rv (also referred to as rs ). This function is
similar to the solution gas-oil ratio, Rs , normally used to describe the amount of gas-in-solution in
the liquid phase. In the following sections, first the velocity effects on the formation and behavior of
condensate bank have been investigated, and then comparisons have been made between different
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methods (i.e., fully compositional model, GPP technique, and black oil simulation (El-Banbi et al.,
2006).

2. DESCRIPTION OF RESERVOIR AND FLUID MODEL

2.1 Reservoir Model

A 1-D radial, homogenous, and isotropic model was made. The model consists of one layer of 210 ft
thickness with 60 grid cells in the radial direction. The model has been very refined near the wellbore
to accurately observe condensate bank effect on production. All the grid sizes are obtained based on
constant logarithmic distance criterion—Ln(r) = constant—according to following equation:
 (1/N)
ri+1 rr
= (4)
ri rw
Where the wellbore radius (rw ) is equal to 0.25 ft and the drainage radius (re ) is equal to 10,013
ft. Absolute permeability and porosity of the synthetic model were 5 md and 0.09, respectively.
The oil-gas and oil-water capillary pressure are equal to zero and the relative permeability curves
are shown in Figures 1(a) and 1(b). The initial reservoir pressure and temperature were equal to
6,200 psia and 266◦ F, respectively. It is also noted that the fully implicit method was chosen for all
simulation runs.

2.2 Reservoir Fluid Model

The fluid used in all simulation runs is a real rich gas condensate fluid, which was taken from a
U.S. (Al-Meshari, 2004) gas field, and has the composition given in Table 1. Eclipse’s Fluid PVT
Module, PVTi, was used to match the calculated results with experimental data of this fluid (Figures
1[c–f]). PVT properties were predicted using three-parameter (Modified) Peng-Robinson equation
of state and fluid viscosity was calculated by Bray and Clark (LBC) correlation.

3. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Effect of Capillary Number on Well Productivity

Two phenomena, which act in opposite directions, can affect the condensation (and consequently
gas and oil relative permeabilities near the well and finally well productivity) of the liquid around the
well at high production rates. The first one is a positive coupling effect, resulting from considering
 764 M. AHMADI ET AL.
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FIGURE 1 Reservoir rock and fluid properties: (a) oil and gas relative permeability curves (Oil-Gas System), (b)
oil and water relative permeability curves (Oil-Water System), (c) observed and calculated CCE relative volume
for reservoir fluid, (d) observed and calculated CVD liquid saturation for reservoir fluid, (e) phase envelope of the
reservoir fluid, and (f) observed and calculated CCE vapor Z-factor for reservoir fluid.

capillary number, which reduces the condensate saturation around the well and the second one is the
non-Darcy (Turbulence or Inertia force) flow effect, which has a negative effect on well productivity
by increasing condensate saturation near the wellbore area. The overall effect of these two high
velocity phenomena in most gas condensate reservoirs is an improvement issue in well productivity
calculations. Due to absence of data required to implement in simulation in order to consider non-
Darcy flow effects in the studied model, in all models of this study, only the effect of positive
coupling (capillary number) is considered.
 SIMULATION METHODS IN GAS CONDENSATE RESERVOIRS 765

TABLE 1
Reservoir Gas Condensate Fluid Composition

Components N2 CO2 C1 C2 C3 IC4 NC4 IC5

Zi 0.0679 0.0135 0.6869 0.0812 0.0376 0.007 0.0149 0.0058

NC5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10 C11 C12+

Zi 0.0066 0.0099 0.0125 0.0129 0.0085 0.0064 0.0029 0.0255

Note. Specific gravity of C12+ = 0.8453; molecular weight of C12+ = 232.

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In order to understand the effect of capillary number on well productivity, the fully compositional
fine grid model was run with a gas production rate of 17 MMscf/day, well bottom-hole pressure
constrain of 500 psia and initial reservoir pressure of 6,200 psia for a period of almost 28 years for
two different cases. In the first case the effect of capillary number was not considered in the model
(NCN model), but in the second case was considered (CN model) without importing any mechanical
skin in these models. So any obtained skin from these simulation runs will be the skin resulting from
formation of condensate bank around the well.
As Figures 2(a–d) show, the production plateau length, well bottom-hole pressure, and producing
gas-oil ratio will be severely under-estimated without considering capillary number in the simulation.
This is reasonable due to the fact that without considering capillary number in the simulation
the condensate saturation around the well will be overestimated. In order to support this reason,
the condensate saturation was drawn versus distance toward the outer radius of the reservoir. By
considering the effects of capillary number in the compositional simulation, the condensate saturation
was decreased from 38 to 19% near the well, which is shown in Figure 2(f). Hence when the
condensate saturation is over-estimated, the gas effective permeability and the well bottom-hole
pressure will be underestimated, leading to the severe underestimation of the well productivity
(Figure 2[e]). In order to investigate the difference between those two fully compositional fine grid
models, a build-up test was performed on both models (i.e., the CN and NCN models). The initial
pressure and temperature of the reservoir were 6200 psia and 266◦ F, respectively. The well in the
models was produced for 375 days and then was shut in for 105 days. Well test single phase pseudo-
pressure derivative analysis of the shut-in period demonstrates a composite behavior (using F.A.S.T.
well test software [2007]). When the effect of capillary number is not considered, only two plateaus
would be observed on the pressure derivative curve, which are representing two different regions, the
first region representing a single phase bulk area of the reservoir (only containing gas and connate
water) and a second region (doughnut-shaped zone) representing a two phase flow region around the
well, as shown in Figure 2(h). The permeability obtained from the first part of the graph corresponds
to the gas effective permeability at connate water saturation while the permeability of the second
zone is the effective permeability of gas in the presence of condensate. Condensate build-up in the
area near the wellbore has affected reservoir performance and imposed an extra skin factor for the
first zone. But in the case of considering capillary number in simulation, an extra two phase region
(third region) with lower condensate saturation with respect to the other two phase region (second
region or doughnut-shaped zone on the pressure derivative) will be observed near the wellbore,
and the region that resulted from reduction of condensate saturation due to high velocity flow effect
(capillary number effect) at the vicinity of the well. When the effect of capillary number is considered
in the simulation, the effective permeability of gas is improved because of reduction of condensate
saturation due to positive coupling (capillary number effect), so the reservoir performance will be
improved with respect to the case without considering the effect of capillary number, which can be
concluded from the reduction of first zone skin factor as shown in Figure 2(g).
 766 M. AHMADI ET AL.
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FIGURE 2 Simulation and well test results of CN and NCN models: (a) well producing gas-oil ratio, (b) Gas
production rates, c) Field average pressures, (d) well bottom-hole pressures, (e) Gas relative permeability profiles, (f)
condensate saturation profiles, (g) log-log plot of differential pseudo-pressure versus superposition radial equivalent
pseudo-time for build-up analysis of CN model (no mechanical skin and non-Darcy effect), and (h) log-log plot of
differential pseudo-pressure versus superposition radial equivalent pseudo-time for build-up analysis of NCN model
(no mechanical skin and non-Darcy effect).
 SIMULATION METHODS IN GAS CONDENSATE RESERVOIRS 767

3.2 Application of GPP Method in Gas Condensate Reservoir Simulation

The commercial simulator software used here was Eclipse. This simulator uses Eqs. (1) to (3)
in order to calculate well bottom-hole pressure for GPP models. This integral equation is solved
by trapezoidal role in some intervals between well grid block pressure and bottom-hole pressure.
The length of these intervals may change the pseudo-pressure answer as it affects the integral
accuracy. However, choosing smaller interval length causes increasing of run time which is itself a
disadvantage. In other words, the two phase pseudo-pressure method is severely sensitive to well
grid block size. When the two GPP was implemented in simulation, the well grid block size was
changed –the size of the remaining gird cells were changed corresponding to each well gird block
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size, based on constant logarithmic distance—in order to find the best size for the well block for
the constant gas production rate of 13 MMscf/day and well bottom hole pressure constrain of 500
psia. Finally the best well grid block size was chosen equal to 30 ft. All the results obtained from
coarse model using two phase pseudo-pressure method (GPP) are relatively good as compared to
the fine model (Figure 3). But as can be seen in Figure 3(d), the well bottom-hole pressure of
coarse model using GPP method—CG (30) + GPP—shows some fluctuation as opposed to the
fine model, which is relatively smooth. In order to find the reason, the block pressure was drawn
versus distance at different times, which is shown in Figure 3(e). As the figure shows the reservoir
blocks pressures did not show any fluctuation, so it seems that the fluctuation of well bottom-hole
pressure results from using GPP method in simulation. The GPP method is a method that is applied
to calculate the mobility of the two phases (gas and oil) of the first grid block (well grid block);
therefore, this reason can be logically acceptable. A coarse grid model exactly the same as the
matched model in above paragraph but without implementing two phase pseudo pressure method
was run in order to see the ability of the GPP method to improve the results of coarse grid model
(CG [30]). The coarse grid model without GPP overestimates the well production plateau length
that can be seen in Figure 3(f), which is due to not considering the effect of condensate bank on
the mobility of different phases in the CG (30) model; so the mobility of different phases will be
overestimated as compared to the coarse grid model with GPP method—CG (30) + GPP. As in
the GPP technique, the effect of condensate bank on the phase mobility is considered by using
Eqs. (1) to (3) while in the absence of GPP method this effect cannot be considered in the coarse
grid model.
In the case of CN model, where the effect of capillary number on condensate saturation is
implemented in the simulation, the sensitivity analyses on the well block size did not give any
acceptable result. In the presence of high velocity flow effects, the condensate saturation near the
well will be decreased due to velocity stripping, and therefore the radius of the two phase flow region
(first region) will be decreased and the size of the second region (two phase region in which only gas
phase is flowing) will be increased especially in the case of rich gas condensates. So the pressure
drop, which is related to this region (two phase region in which only gas is flowing), becomes large
and cannot be ignored. While in the GPP method the behavior and effect of the two phase flow region
is treated in the well grid block and the pressure drop of condensate build-up region (in which only
gas phase is flowing) will be eliminated. So by eliminating the effect of this region in the current
conditions, the large errors will be introduced in the final results and consequently the GPP method
doses not give acceptable results. In addition, when the well bottom-hole flowing pressure drops
below the dew point pressure of the gas condensate, the condensate bank will be formed near the
wellbore. By increasing production time, the well bottom-hole pressure drop will be increased and
consequently the field average pressure will be decreased. So the radius of condensate bank starts to
increase during the production time due to higher condensation near the wellbore (but its radius will
be stabilized, as the liquid content of gas phase is limited and also because of pressure dependency
of condensation process).
 768 M. AHMADI ET AL.
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FIGURE 3 Simulation results of NCN, (CG (30) + GPP), and (CG (30)) models: (a) Oil production rates of NCN
and (CG (30) + GPP), (b) gas production rates of NCN and (CG (30) + GPP), (c) well producing gas-oil ratio of
NCN and (CG (30) + GPP), (d) well bottom-hole pressures of NCN and (CG (30) + GPP), (e) pressure profiles of
(CG (30) + GPP)), and (f) gas production rates of all mentioned models.

3.3 BO and MBO Simulation

In order to compare black oil and compositional models (grid configuration of all models was
the same as the fine model described in section 2.1), the well in all models was produced for the
period of 10200 days, with gas production rate of 18 MMscf/day and well bottom-hole constrain
of 500 psia. The simulation results and condensate saturation profile of all models are shown
in Figure 4. The fine grid black oil model (FBO) overestimates well productivity, and it is due
to this reason that the commercial black oil model is not able to model condensation process
so the gas will behave similar to a dry gas and consequently no condensate liquid will form
around the well. As can be seen in Figure 4(e), the condensate saturation in FMBO model is
 SIMULATION METHODS IN GAS CONDENSATE RESERVOIRS 769
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FIGURE 4 Simulation results of CN, FMBO, NCN, and FBO models: (a) well producing gas-oil ratio, (b) gas
production rates, (c) oil production rates, (d) well bottom-hole pressures, and (e) saturation profiles.
 770 M. AHMADI ET AL.
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FIGURE 5 Simulation results of NCN (black line) and coursed MBO (blue dotted-line) models: (a) field average
pressures, (b) gas production rates, (c) total gas productions, (d) well bottom-hole pressures, (e) total oil productions,
and (f) well producing gas-oil ratio.

greater than NCN model and consequently the well productivity underestimation is greater in
the MBO model relative to NCN model, as the simulation results confirm this fact. Because in
the MBO model the condensation process is a function of pressure only whereas in reality this
process not only depend on pressure, but also on molecular weight of different components of the
reservoir fluid. It means that heavier components condense earlier than the lighter components and
in the case of vaporization process the lighter components vaporize faster. So the MBO model will
overestimate the condensate saturation around the well as it does not consider molecular weight of
the components in its calculations. And as a consequence, all the components will condense without
any priority. To compensate this problem the well block size of MBO model was increased and the
results are shown in Figure 5. As can be seen, the results are good enough for field development
purposes.
 SIMULATION METHODS IN GAS CONDENSATE RESERVOIRS 771

4. CONCLUSIONS

Based on the results cited in previous sections following conclusions are proposed:

• Two phase pseudo-pressure method (GPP) of Fevang and Whitson (1995) is severely sensitive
to well grid block size. Therefore, it is important to do some sensitivity analysis to find the best
well grid block size.
• The obtained well bottom-hole pressure of simulation using the GPP method shows some
fluctuation as opposed to the fine model and this may be another disadvantage of this method.
However, caution should be exercised in generalizing these results.
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• The FBO model overestimates condensate saturation compared to the fine grid fully composi-
tional model, which does not consider high velocity flow effects (NCN model).
• It seems that the black oil model can be used to obtain fine grid fully compositional model
results for the depletion cases above and below dew point pressure, so it can be used as a
good method to obtain good estimation for gas and oil recoveries and other parameters that are
important especially in gas field developments.

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