Aplication of the TDS technique for determining the average reservoir pressure for vertical wells in naturally fractured reservoirs

Abstract

Average reservoir pressure is used for characterizing a reservoir, computing oil in place, performing reservoir monitoring by material balance, estimating productivity indexes and predicting future reservoir behavior and ultimate recovery. It is truly important to understand much reservoir behavior in any stage of the reservoir life: primary recovery, secondary recovery and pressure maintenance projects. The average reservoir pressure plays a critical role in field appraisal, well sizing, and surface facilities sizing. Almost every well intervention job requires the knowledge of this parameter.  No significant research was conducted during the last three decades on the determination of the average reservoir pressure. The majority of the existing methods for determining average reservoir pressure are based on conventional analysis and some of them use correction plots for specific reservoir shapes which made them of low practicity. A new methodology based on the Tiab Direct Synthesis (TDS) technique uses the pressure derivative for determination of the average reservoir pressure was introduced very recently for vertical and horizontal wells in homogeneous reservoirs. This technique has been extended to naturally fractured formations using information from the second straight line of the semilog plot.  By default, all reservoirs are naturally fractured; estimating the average reservoir pressure for homogeneous reservoirs should be a specific case of naturally fractured reservoirs. Currently, the inverse procedure is performed. Therefore, in this article a new, easy and practical methodology is presented for the first time, estimating average reservoir pressure for naturally fractured reservoirs (heterogeneous systems) during pseudosteady-state flow period for vertical wells located inside closed drainage regions. This technique employs a new analytical equation which uses a single pressure point and the value of the pressure derivative corresponding to the late time pseudosteady state period eliminating the use of correction charts and type-curve matching. We verified the proposed technique with simulated cases for values of the interporosity flow parameter, Λ, of 1 and the storativity coefficient, , of 0 (homogeneous reservoir) and successfully compared to traditional techniques and by the application to one field case. This technique (Tiab, 1995) is accurate since it uses an exact analytical solution and matches very well the results from conventional analysis. It is also more practical and much easier to use than conventional analysis.