Permeability variation and anisotropy of gas hydrate-bearing pressure-core sediments recovered from the Krishna–Godavari Basin, offshore India

Yoneda, Jun; Oshima, Motoi; Kida, Masato; Kato, Akira; Konno, Yoshihiro; Jin, Yusuke; Jang, Junbong; Waite, William F.; Kumar, Pushpendra; Tenma, Norio

doi:10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2018.07.006

Cited by 130 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…The examination of hydrate cores under laboratory conditions provides insights into the hydrate properties and overall behaviour during formation and dissociation [14]. A persistent issue in artificial samples is the spatial heterogeneity of hydrate in the core [15,20,24,26], as there is evidence that it can affect the production behaviour exhibited during laboratory experiments of dissociation [26].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This requires knowledge gleaned from studies at different scales, i.e., at pore- [7][8][9], core- [10,11] and reservoir-scale [12,13]. The examination of hydrate cores under laboratory conditions provides insights into the hydrate growth habits, the thermophysical properties of the hydrate-medium complex system, and of the overall behaviour during formation/dissociation, all critical in understanding and designing the production process [14]. The importance of these laboratory tests cannot be over-emphasized, but such studies are severely hampered by the difficulty of forming/procuring samples representative of hydrate-bearing media under field conditions [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effectiveness of multi-stage cooling processes in improving the CH4-hydrate saturation uniformity in sandy laboratory samples

et al. 2019

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Laboratory-created samples of methane hydrate (MH)-bearing media are a necessity because of the rarity and difficulty of obtaining naturally-occurring samples. The hypothesis that the inevitable heterogeneity in the phase saturations of the laboratory samples may lead to unreliable and non-repeatable results provided the impetus for this study, which aimed to determine the conditions under which maximum uniformity can be achieved. To that end, we designed four experiments involving different multi-stage cooling regimes (in terms of their duration and number of stages) to induce MH formation under excess-water conditions. In the absence of direct visualization capabilities, we analysed the experimental results by means of numerical simulation, which provided high-resolution predictions of the spatial distributions of the phase saturations in the cores and enabled the estimation of the parameters controlling the kinetic MH-formation behaviour through history-matching. Analysis of the numerical results indicated that, under the conditions of the experiments and with the design of the reactor, significant heterogeneities in phase saturation distributions were observed in all cases, leading to the conclusion that it is not possible to obtain cores with uniform phase saturation. Additionally, contrary to expectations, heterogeneities increased with the number of cooling stages and the duration of cooling, and this was attributed to imperfect insulation of the upper part of the reactor. A set of simulations involving perfect insulation of the reactor top confirmed the validity of this assumption: (a) predicting the formation of high-uniformity MH-bearing cores that became more homogeneous as 1 The short version of the paper was presented at ICAE2018, Aug 22-25 (2018), Hong Kong. This paper is a substantial extension of the short version of the conference paper.2 the number of cooling stages and the length of the cooling period increased; and (b) providing important information for the improvement of the standard design of the experimental apparatus for the laboratory creation of MH-bearing cores using the excess water method.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of multi-stage cooling processes in improving the CH4-hydrate saturation uniformity in sandy laboratory samples

et al. 2019

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“…Advances in pressure core technology and downhole techniques to directly measure the permeability of natural hydrate‐bearing sediments (Fujii et al, 2015; Jang et al, 2019; Kleinberg et al, 2003; Konno et al, 2015; Priest et al, 2015; Santamarina et al, 2015; Yoneda et al, 2019) have provided new insights as well as interpretive challenges. Measured permeability in collocational cores varies depending on the measurement techniques (Dai et al, 2017; Fujii et al, 2015), in part because these methods measure permeability in different directions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pore‐Scale Controls on the Gas and Water Transport in Hydrate‐Bearing Sediments

Zhan

Yun

et al. 2020

Geophysical Research Letters

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Gas and water flow rates shape the economic feasibility of hydrate deposit exploration. However, pore-scale controls on the gas and water transport as well as ensued impacts on gas production from hydrate deposits have not been well understood. This study uses 3D pore network modeling to understand the impacts of pore characteristics, hydrate, and hysteresis on two-phase fluid transport in hydrate-bearing sediments. The results highlight that drying and wetting are occurring simultaneously in sediments resulting in a nonunique water retention curve. The relative permeability to gas is governed by the coefficient of variance and the connectivity of pore size distribution in sediments. Parameter values for the modified Brook-Corey relative permeability model are recommended considering preferential hydrate pore clogging habits. Plain Language Summary Economic exploitation of natural hydrate deposits largely depends on the gas and water production rates. However, the gas and water flow models used in current gas production simulations lack rationales in determining their parameter values. This study uses pore network modeling to investigate how various factors, including pore size distribution, pore connectivity, hydrate saturation, and hydrate pore clogging habits, can affect the gas and water flow. The results offer elegant relations to determine the parameter values for gas and water flow in hydrate-bearing sediments.

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“…As an alternative to experiments, some researchers rely on fitting empirical relative permeability models (Joseph et al, ) to pore network modeling results (Kang et al, ; Katagiri et al, ; Mahabadi & Jang, ; Mahabadi, Dai, et al, , Mahabadi, Zheng et al, ; Wang et al, ), which, although useful, is limited by the lack of mechanistic models to describe petrophysical properties in addition to the computational expense required in developing a new pore network model for each scenario. The empirical relative permeability models used in pore network modeling, particle‐based 3‐D packs (Katagiri et al, , ), or otherwise (Yoneda et al, ) essentially involve fitting relative permeability curve separately for each hydrate saturation, which gives different model parameters for each hydrate saturation. The major drawback of these empirical models, besides several other limitations as discussed in Singh et al (), is that they rely on fitted parameters for relative permeability and capillary pressure functions at studied gas hydrate saturation to predict relative permeability and capillary pressure at other gas hydrate saturations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Mechanistic Model for Relative Permeability of Gas and Water Flow in Hydrate‐Bearing Porous Media With Capillarity

Singh

Mahabadi

Myshakin

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

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Lack of mechanistic models to describe petrophysical properties of mobile phases in gas hydrate‐bearing sediments is one of the key challenges in accurately predicting gas production. The major drawback of empirical models that are used to fit a relative permeability curve for mobile phases in gas hydrate‐bearing sediments is that they are based on experimental data, which are limited, and not able to account for hydrate morphology in pore space. This study proposes a relative permeability model that is mechanistic in nature and developed to account capillarity by building on the original nonempirical relative permeability model that assumes negligible capillary pressure. The proposed model implicitly accounts for capillarity with the help of four empirical parameters (two for each mobile phase) that incorporate each mobile phase pressure. It is shown that the proposed model provides an improved match to relative permeability data (derived from pore‐scale simulation of gas hydrate‐bearing sediments) than nonempirical relative permeability by accounting for the effect of capillary pressure. Additionally, unlike fully empirical models that can predict relative permeabilities reliably only at gas hydrate saturations for which experimental data are available, the proposed model only requires fitting the empirical parameters once with experimental data at any single gas hydrate saturation and then it can then be used to predict relative permeability at any gas hydrate saturation. The mechanistic nature of the proposed model allows studying relative permeability of hydrate‐bearing sediments as a function of hydrate morphology and wettability (fluid phase distribution) besides other physical parameters of the model (e.g., porosity, gas, and water residual saturation). Based on the sensitivity analysis of different hydrate morphologies on gas/water relative permeability, it is found that gas relative permeability is sensitive to hydrate morphologies, while water relative permeability shows little dependency on hydrate localization in pore space.

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Permeability variation and anisotropy of gas hydrate-bearing pressure-core sediments recovered from the Krishna–Godavari Basin, offshore India

Cited by 130 publications

References 48 publications

Effectiveness of multi-stage cooling processes in improving the CH4-hydrate saturation uniformity in sandy laboratory samples

Effectiveness of multi-stage cooling processes in improving the CH4-hydrate saturation uniformity in sandy laboratory samples

Pore‐Scale Controls on the Gas and Water Transport in Hydrate‐Bearing Sediments

A Mechanistic Model for Relative Permeability of Gas and Water Flow in Hydrate‐Bearing Porous Media With Capillarity

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