Evaluation of Recovery of Tight Sandstone Gas Reservoirs Based on a Seepage Steady-State Model

Abstract

As an important indicator for measuring the effectiveness and level of oil and gas field development, recovery rate has always been a focus in the research of oil and gas fields. Reservoirs of tight sandstone gas formations have significant characteristics of low porosity, high permeability, and high water content, which leads to greater difficulty in their development and makes it challenging to evaluate the recovery rate. Newtonian mechanics, as an important component of the mechanical system, is an innovative application of classical mechanics in the field of seepage mechanics when applied to the two-phase flow of gas and water. Firstly, starting from the perspective of mechanics analysis, we derive a steady-state model for gas–water two-phase infiltration and obtain the productivity equation based on this model. Then, according to the steady-state model, we establish a method to calculate the effective control radius of gas reservoirs under different production conditions and reservoir physical properties. Finally, using Matlab 2018a programming based on the productivity equation, we calculate the gas recovery under different conditions during constant pressure drop production and constant production rate production. The results indicate that the effective control radius of the reservoir decreases with an increase in the economic ultimate daily gas production, increases with an increase in production pressure difference, slightly decreases with an increase in startup pressure gradient, and correspondingly increases with an increase in microtube radius and quantity. Regardless of whether it is production with a fixed pressure drop or production with a fixed production rate, the gas recovery decreases as the production pressure drop and bottomhole abandonment pressure increase, but it increases as the proportion of the single-well control radius increases. In production with a fixed pressure drop, the gas recovery remains consistent across different reservoir quality indices. However, in production with a fixed production rate, the gas recovery initially increases rapidly and then gradually slows down as the reservoir quality index increases, and there is an obvious critical permeability (0.1 mD). The research findings are based on the mechanical analysis of porous media, delving into the laws governing fluid flow during infiltration. The derived infiltration model can be used to calculate the effective control radius and evaluate recovery rates, providing practical guidance for reservoir development.

Keywords

• seepage steady-state model
• productivity equation
• effective control radius
• gas recovery