| Popis: |
Rim oil reservoirs are often associated with either large water aquifer or gas cap or both. These conditions often present unique challenges in the economic viability of these properties due to the high coning tendency during production. Due to the limited resource potential of these reserves, the cost involved in evaluating their economic potentials in the first place and the optimal production rate to be employed in their eventual development are not infrequently hard nuts to crack for developers. Various schemes have been advanced for the development of oil rims including strategic well placement, intelligent well completion, etc. Determination of the most important factors that control recovery in thin oil columns using generic simulation to aid assessment is an interesting scheme even though the end product is known to sometimes deviate from physical and mathematical trends. Restricting production to critical rate figures is often not practicable. In this work, a simple procedure amenable to computer coding employing critical rate and after breakthrough behavior correlations and modest data is developed to calculate the economic maximum efficient rate (MER) for the development of oil rims with water coning challenge. The MER so computed can be used as a cost effective reserve potential evaluation tool for preliminary assessment of thin oil column properties. The accuracy of this method is a direct function of the critical rate and after breakthrough behavior models used in its development. This can be a great advantage as it ensures that the procedure can be adapted to any reservoir condition for which suitable correlations are available or can be developed. It also implies that models that are more in keeping with physical and mathematical principles can be put to use. |
