Reservoir Formation Damage (eBook)

Faruk Civan (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2015 | 3. Auflage
1042 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-0-12-801910-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Reservoir Formation Damage, Third Edition, provides the latest information on the economic problems that can occur during various phases of oil and gas recovery from subsurface reservoirs, including production, drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and workover operations. The text helps readers better understand the processes causing formation damage and the factors that can lead to reduced flow efficiency in near-wellbore formation during the various phases of oil and gas production. The third edition in the series provides the most all-encompassing volume to date, adding new material on conformance and water control, hydraulic fracturing, special procedures for unconventional reservoirs, field applications design, and cost assessment for damage control measures and strategies. - Understand relevant formation damage processes by laboratory and field testing - Develop theories and mathematical expressions for description of the fundamental mechanisms and processes - Predict and simulate the consequences and scenarios of the various types of formation damage processes encountered in petroleum reservoirs - Develop methodologies and optimal strategies for formation damage control and remediation

Faruk Civan is the Martin G. Miller Chair Professor of the Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. He formerly held the Brian and Sandra O'Brien Presidential and Alumni Chair Professorships. Previously, he worked in the Chemical Engineering department at the Technical University of Istanbul, Turkey. Dr. Civan received an Advanced Engineering Degree from the Technical University of Istanbul, Turkey, a M.S. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Texas, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma. All of his degrees are in chemical engineering.Dr. Civan specializes in petrophysics and reservoir characterization; fossil and sustainable energy resources development; carbon sequestration; unconventional gas and condensate reservoirs; reservoir and well/pipeline hydraulics and flow assurance; formation and well damage modeling, diagnosis, assessment, and mitigation; reservoir and well analyses, modeling, and simulation; natural gas engineering, measurement, processing, hydrates, transportation, and storage; carbon dioxide sequestration; coalbed methane production; improved reservoir recovery techniques; corrosion protection in oil and gas wells; filtration and separation techniques; oil and gas processing, transportation, and storage; multiphase transport phenomena in porous media; environmental pollution assessment, prevention, and control; mathematical modeling and simulation, and solving differential equations by numerical methods including by the quadrature, cubature, and finite-analytic methods.Dr. Civan is the author of two books, has published more than 330 technical articles in journals, edited books, handbooks, encyclopedia, and conference proceedings, and presented worldwide more than 125 invited seminars and/or lectures at various technical meetings, companies, and universities. He teaches short industry courses on a number of topics worldwide. Additionally, he has written numerous reports on his funded research projects. Dr. Civan's publications have been cited frequently in various publications, as reported by the Science Author Citation Index.He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. and a member of the editorial boards of several journals. He has served on numerous petroleum and chemical engineering, and other related conferences and meetings in various capacities, including as committee chairman and member, session organizer, chair or co-chair, and instructor. Civan has received 21 honors and awards, including five distinguished lectureship awards and the 2003 SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty and the 2014 SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Overview of Formation Damage

A comprehensive review of the various types of formation damage problems encountered in petroleum reservoirs is presented. The factors and processes causing these problems are described in detail. The design of a team effort necessary for understanding and controlling of the formation damage problems in the field is explained. The motivation for the writing of this book and the specific objectives are stated. The approach taken in the presentation of the materials in this book is explained. A brief executive summary of the topics covered in the book is given. The roles played by different professionals, such as the petroleum and chemical engineers, chemists, physicist, geologists, and geochemists, are described.

Keywords

Petroleum; petroleum reservoirs; formation damage; deformation; remediation

Summary

A comprehensive review of the various types of formation damage problems encountered in petroleum reservoirs is presented. The factors and processes causing these problems are described in detail. The design of a team effort necessary for understanding and controlling of the formation damage problems in the field is explained. The motivation for the writing of this book and the specific objectives are stated. The approach taken in the presentation of the materials in this book is explained. A brief executive summary of the topics covered in the book is given. The roles played by different professionals, such as the petroleum and chemical engineers, chemists, physicist, geologists, and geochemists, are described.

1.1 Introduction

Formation damage is a generic term that refers to the impairment of the permeability of petroleum-bearing formations by various adverse processes. Formation damage is an undesirable operational and economic problem that can occur during the various phases of oil and gas recovery from subsurface reservoirs, including drilling, production, hydraulic fracturing, and workover operations (Civan, 2005a,b,c,d). As expressed by Amaefule et al. (1988): “Formation damage is an expensive headache to the oil and gas industry.” Bennion (1999) described formation damage as: “The impairment of the invisible, by the inevitable and uncontrollable, resulting in an indeterminate reduction of the unquantifiable!” Formation damage assessment, control, and remediation are among the most important issues to be resolved for efficient exploitation of hydrocarbon reservoirs (Energy Highlights, 1990). Formation damage may be caused by many factors, including physico-chemical, chemical, biologic, hydrodynamic, and thermal interactions of porous formation, particles, and fluids, and the mechanical deformation of formation under stress and fluid shear. These processes are triggered during the drilling, production, workover, and hydraulic fracturing operations.

Ordinarily, the mineral matter and fine particles loosely attached to the pore surface are at equilibrium with the pore fluids. However, variations in chemical, thermodynamic, and stress states may create nonequilibrium conditions and induce the salinity, velocity, and thermal shock phenomena, as well as particle detachment and precipitate formation. When the equilibrium condition existing between the pore surface and the fluids is disturbed during reservoir production by primary, secondary, and enhanced recovery processes, the mineral matter may dissolve and generate many different ions in the aqueous phase, and the fine particles are unleashed from the pore surface into the fluid phases. Once these ions and particles are introduced into the fluid phases, they become mobile. Thus, a condition is created, like a bowl of soup of the mobile ions and fine particles in the pore space, which may interact freely with each other in many intricate ways to create severe reservoir formation damage problems.

Formation damage indicators include permeability impairment, skin damage, and decrease in well performance. As stated by Porter (1989): “Formation damage is not necessarily reversible” and “what gets into porous media does not necessarily come out.” Porter (1989) called this phenomenon “the reverse funnel effect.” Therefore, it is better to avoid formation damage than to try to restore the formation. A verified formation damage model and carefully planned laboratory and field tests can provide scientific guidance and help develop strategies to avoid or minimize formation damage. Properly designed experimental and analytic techniques, and the modeling and simulation approaches can help with the understanding, diagnosis, evaluation, prevention, remediation, and controlling of formation damage in oil and gas reservoirs.

The consequences of formation damage are the reduction of the oil and gas productivity of reservoirs and noneconomic operation. Therefore, it is essential to develop experimental and analytic methods for understanding and preventing and/or controlling formation damage in oil- and gas-bearing formations (Energy Highlights, 1990). The laboratory experiments are important steps in reaching an understanding of the physical mechanisms of formation damage phenomena. “From this experimental basis, realistic models which allow extrapolation outside the scalable range may be constructed” (Energy Highlights, 1990). These efforts are necessary to develop and verify accurate mathematic models and computer simulators that can be used for predicting and determining strategies to avoid and/or mitigate formation damage in petroleum reservoirs (Civan, 1994a,b,c,d,e, 1996a, 2007b,c).

Confidence in formation damage prediction using phenomenologic models cannot be gained without field testing. Planning and designing field test procedures for verification of the mathematic models are important. Once a model has been validated, it can be used for accurate simulation of the reservoir formation damage and designing effective measures for formation damage mitigation. Current techniques for reservoir characterization by history matching do not consider the alteration of the characteristics of reservoir formation during petroleum production. In reality, formation characteristics vary (Civan, 2001a,b,c, 2002a,b,c,d,e,f) and a formation damage model can help incorporate this variation into the history-matching process for accurate characterization of reservoir systems and, hence, an accurate prediction of future performance.

Formation damage is an exciting, challenging, and evolving field of research. Eventually, the research efforts will lead to a better understanding and simulation tools that can be used for model-assisted analysis of rock, fluid, and particle interactions and the processes caused by rock deformation and scientific guidance for development of production strategies for formation damage control in petroleum reservoirs. In the past, numerous experimental and theoretic studies have been carried out for the purpose of understanding the factors and mechanisms that govern the phenomena involving formation damage. Although various results were obtained from these studies, a unified theory and approach still do not exist. In spite of extensive research efforts, development of technologies and optimal strategies for cost-effective mitigation of formation damage is still as much art as science.

Civan (1996a) explains:

A formation damage model is a dynamic relationship expressing the fluid transport capability of porous medium undergoing various alteration processes. Modeling formation damage in petroleum reservoirs has been of continuing interest. Although many models have been proposed, these models do not have the general applicability. However, an examination of the various modeling approaches reveals that these models share a common ground and, therefore, a general model can be developed, from which these models can be derived. Although modeling based on well accepted theoretical analyses is desirable and accurate, macroscopic formation damage modeling often relies on some intuition and empiricism inferred by the insight gained from experimental studies.

As J. Willard Gibbs stated in a practical manner: “The purpose of a theory is to find that viewpoint from which experimental observations appear to fit the pattern” (Duda, 1990).

Civan (1996a) states:

The fundamental processes causing damage in petroleum bearing formations are: (1) physico-chemical, (2) chemical, (3) hydrodynamic, (4) thermal, (5) mechanical, and (6) biological. Formation damage studies are carried out for (1) understanding of these processes via laboratory and field testing, (2) development of mathematical models via the description of fundamental mechanisms and processes, (3) optimization for prevention and/or reduction of the damage potential of the reservoir formation, and (4) development of formation damage control strategies and remediation methods. These tasks can be accomplished by means of a model-assisted data analysis, case studies, and extrapolation and scaling to conditions beyond the limited test conditions. The formulation of the general purpose formation damage model describes the relevant phenomena on the macroscopic scale, i.e., by representative elementary porous media averaging (Civan, 2002).

As stated by Civan (1996a):

Development of a numerical solution scheme for the highly nonlinear phenomenological model and its modification and verification by means of experimental testing of a variety of cores...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.9.2015
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geophysik
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Elektrotechnik / Energietechnik
• ISBN-10: 0-12-801910-7 / 0128019107
• ISBN-13: 978-0-12-801910-8 / 9780128019108