The Novel Approach to Pressure Transient Analysis in Highly Fractured Reservoirs: Case Study from Patardzeuli Field, Georgia

Abstract

Fractures are common features of many carbonate reservoirs. Given complex flow network that they create, characterization of dynamic behavior of these reservoirs is often complicated and becomes important, especially, if fractures provide primary pathways of fluid flow. In this paper a novel semianalytical simulator was used to understand the pressure behavior of naturally fractured reservoir containing a network of discrete and/or connected finite and infinite-conductivity fractures. In this study an integrated interpretation methodology is applied to analyze well test data acquired in open hole section of exploration well drilled into highly fractured carbonate reservoir of Lower Eocene - Upper Cretaceous sediments on Patardzeuli field of Block XI-B, Republic of Georgia. The main steps consisted of explicitly modeling fractures - both wellbore-intersecting fractures and fractures located away from wellbore - using formation microimager data and calibrating the model to actual well test response using a unique novel mesh-free semi-analytical simulator designed for fractured reservoirs. Study presents the results of well test of one zone performed in highly fractured carbonate reservoir drilled in Patardzeuli field. The pressure-transient response confirmed the complexity of reservoir and dominant contribution to flow regimes from fractures. It is shown in this paper that there are many factors that dominate transient behavior of a well intersected by natural fractures, such as fracture conductivity, length, intensity and distribution, as well as whether fractures intersect the wellbore or not. Moreover, it was demonstrated that presence or absence of damage on wellbore-intersecting fractures in vicinity of wellbore will impact the pressure- transient behavior of reservoir and shape overall productivity of the well. The novelty of the approach is the analysis of the dynamic behavior using a unique semi-analytical pressure transient simulator for fractured reservoirs. The simulator can be used to obtain a response for arbitrarily distributed infinite and/or finite conductivity natural fractures within the reservoir by modeling them explicitly. In this study, it allowed to maximize the value of well tests by assessing the effect of fractures on reservoir dynamic behavior and obtain matrix and fracture parameters where conventional well test interpretation tools would be deemed unviable.