3.6: Summary and Final Tasks

Summary

In this lesson, we learned that the two most critical considerations in petroleum engineering in general, and reservoir engineering, in particular, are the ability of the reservoir rock to store fluids and the ability of the reservoir rock to transmit fluids. We then learned that the properties that govern these two considerations can be divided into three categories: rock, fluid, and rock-fluid interaction properties. We also saw how properties within these categories need to be integrated to make meaningful analyses of subsurface phenomenon. For example, the multiphase version of Darcy’s Law, Equation 3-85, contains rock properties (permeability), fluid properties (viscosity and formation volume factor), and rock-fluid interaction properties (capillary pressure and relative permeability).

In addition, we discussed the data sources (field, laboratory, or derive from correlations) of the required data. We saw that there were multiple sources of reservoir properties. For rock properties, we saw that laboratory (core) and field measurements could be used (for example, core experiments and well logs for porosity determination and core floods and well tests for permeability determination).

For fluid properties, we saw that laboratory measurements (PVT cell) and property correlations could be used. We also saw that most of the fluid properties are pressure dependent.

Finally, we discussed the rock-fluid interaction properties. We started this discussion with an introduction to phase saturations and continued to discuss capillary pressures and relative permeabilities. We saw that the rock-fluid interaction properties were dependent on the phase saturations.

Final Tasks