Study on Stress Sensitivity of Ultra-Low Permeability Sandstone Reservoir Considering Starting Pressure Gradient

Abstract

When studying the influence of nonlinear seepage on the water flooding development of ultra-low permeability reservoirs, it is difficult to accurately characterize the nonlinear seepage state of ultra-low permeability reservoirs using conventional reservoir numerical simulation methods. A large number of field development and tests in the oil fields show that there are indeed starting pressure gradients and stress sensitivity effects in ultra-low permeability sandstone reservoirs. In this study, taking the tight sandstone of the Chang 6 Member in the Yanchang Formation as an example, the rock displacement vector was utilized to equivalently characterize the stress-sensitive effect of the reservoir based on a novel numerical simulation software tNavigator. Furthermore, the starting pressure gradient and the feasibility of a new stress-sensitive equivalent characterization method were verified combining the poroelastic media physics equations. In addition, we systematically studied the impact of stress-sensitive effects on oil well productivity under the influence of starting pressure gradient and considering petrophysical properties. The results show that the existence of the starting pressure gradient can improve the stress sensitivity of the matrix reservoir. Considering the starting pressure gradient, when the rock shear modulus is 14.29 GPa, the cumulative oil production decreases by 4.1%; when the rock shear modulus is 11.36 GPa, the cumulative oil production decreases by 11.2%. Finally, a numerical simulation was conducted with Block B in the Zhouwan-Wugucheng area, and the model can accurately predict the reservoir stress sensitivity based on the starting pressure gradient. When both the starting pressure gradient and stress sensitivity are considered, the crude oil recovery degree of the target layer decreases by 11.7%; when only the starting pressure gradient is considered, the crude oil recovery degree decreases by 8.8%; and when only the stress sensitivity is considered, the crude oil recovery degree decreases by 0.5%.

Numerical simulation of fractured horizontal well considering threshold pressure gradient, non‐Darcy flow, and stress sensitivity

“…It was reported that the capillary pressure under low porosity significantly affects the TPG in porous media. Luo et al 8 verified the feasibility of TPG flow and developed a stress‐sensitive equivalent characterization method based on the physical equations of poroelastic media. Zhu et al 5 described the correlation between TPG, dynamic water saturation, and permeability using a semi‐empirical model based on two‐phase (gas‐water) experiments.…”

Numerical Simulation of Multiarea Seepage in Deep Condensate Gas Reservoirs with Natural Fractures

“…The matrix of deep formation is tight and has a low permeability, and the permeability difference between it and its fractures is large, which causes different flow characteristics to form [5,6]. For low-permeability reservoirs, many research results have shown the impact of threshold pressure gradient on seepage [7][8][9][10]. Many studies focus on oil, water, or oil-water phases [11,12], while practice has proved that there is a threshold pressure gradient in the development of low-permeability gas reservoirs [13][14][15].…”