Petroleum Exploration and Development (Dec 2022)
Simulation of pore space production law and capacity expansion mechanism of underground gas storage
Abstract
One-dimensional gas injection storage building and one-cycle injection-production modeling experiment, and two-dimensional flat core storage building and multi-cycle injection-production modeling experiment were carried out using one-dimensional long core and large two-dimensional flat physical models to find out the effects of reservoir physical properties and injection-production balance time on reservoir pore utilization efficiency, effective reservoir capacity formation and capacity-reaching cycle. The results show that reservoir physical properties and formation water saturation are the main factors affecting the construction and operation of gas-reservoir type underground gas storage. During the construction and operation of gas-reservoir type gas storage, the reservoir space can be divided into three types of working zones: high efficiency, low efficiency and ineffective ones. The higher the reservoir permeability, the higher the pore utilization efficiency is, the smaller the ineffective working zone is, or there is no ineffective working zone; the smaller the loss of injected gas is, and the higher the utilization rate of pores is. The better the reservoir physical properties, the larger the reservoir space and the larger the final gas storage capacity is. The higher the water saturation of the reservoir, the more the gas loss during gas storage capacity building and operation is. Optimizing injection-production regime to discharge water and reduce water saturation is an effective way to reduce gas loss in gas storage. In the process of multiple cycles of injection and production, there is a reasonable injection-production balance time, further extending the injection-production balance period after reaching the reasonable time has little contribution to the expansion of gas storage capacity.
