Production forecasting of gas condensate well considering fluid phase
behavior in the reservoir and wellbore
Juntai Shi
a, *
, Liang Huang
a
, Xiangfang Li
a
, Kamy Sepehrnoori
b
a
MOE Key Laboratory of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum at Beijing, Beijing 102249, PR China
b
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
article info
Article history:
Received 19 November 2014
Received in revised form
20 March 2015
Accepted 22 March 2015
Available online
Keywords:
Gas condensate wells
Deliverability equations
Fluid phase behavior
Wellbore
Pseudo-pressure function
Two phase flow
abstract
Retrograde condensation occurs when the reservoir pressure falls below the dew point pressure in gas
condensate reservoirs. Complex fluid phase behavior in the reservoir and the wellbore makes it chal-
lenging to predict the productivity of gas condensate wells. To date, the gas rate in the deliverability
equation of gas well is assumed the gas rate at surface condition converted from that at the reservoir
condition by using the volume factor. However, because of the complex fluid phase behavior in gas
condensate wells, the gas rate at the reservoir condition cannot be directly changed to that at surface
condition by using volume factor. Hence, the development of a new analytical model to accurately
calculate the productivity of gas condensate wells is still required and necessary.
In this work, we propose a new deliverability equation of gas condensate wells with a consideration of
fluid phase behavior in both the reservoir and the wellbore. Also, several pseudo-pressure functions for
different condensate distribution and flow models are examined systematically; these include the model
before condensation, the model after condensation, but without condensate flow, the model after
condensation and with condensate flow, and the model after re-vaporization. Two synthetic numerical
simulation cases and two field case studies are performed to validate these deliverability equations for
gas condensate wells.
Results show that the phase behavior of gas condensate fluid in the wellbore plays a significant role in
the deliverability evaluation and in the forecasting of gas condensate wells. If neglecting its effect on the
deliverability, gas and condensate production rates could not be accurately predicted. The data from the
proposed model have good agreement with the simulation and field production data of wells in Yakela
Gas Condensate Reservoir and Yaha Gas Condensate Reservoir in China. If the conventional deliverability
equation neglecting the effect of phase behavior in the wellbore was used, the predicted gas production
will be higher than the actual value; even 50% higher than the actual value at high flow rates. Through
these case studies, it can be concluded that the effect of condensate-gas phase behavior in the wellbore
cannot be ignored in the deliverability equation for gas condensate wells.
This work can provide a more accurate method of forecasting the gas and condensate production for
condensate gas reservoirs and also guide optimization of single well production rate and gas recovery
rate for gas condensate reservoirs.
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Gas condensate reservoir is a special complex reservoir. In the
production process, the condensate liquid will retrograde, gradu-
ally accumulate, and then form condensate blocking in the vicinity
of wellbore after the bottom-hole flowing pressure (BHFP) has
dropped below the dew point pressure (Muskat and Meres, 1936;
Fevang and Whitson, 1995; Whitson et al., 1999; Henderson et al.,
2000). The condensate blocking would decrease the productivity
of gas condensate well. Many researchers have proposed different
types of deliverability equations for gas condensate wells, which
can be summarized into four types: the deliverability equation for
conventional gas wells (Houpeurt, 1959; Rawlins and Schellhardt,
1935) in which the gas flow rate is assumed the sum of pure gas
flow rate and condensate converted gas flow rate (Li, 2008; Shi
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: juntai.shi@gmail.com (J. Shi).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jngse
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2015.03.033
1875-5100/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering 24 (2015) 279e290