COMPARISON OF PVT CORRELATIONS FOR PREDICTING CRUDE OIL PROPERTIES: THE BRAZILIAN CAMPOS BASIN CASE STUDY

Abstract

Pressure-Volume-Temperature correlations are essential for estimating the required parameters necessary for the identification of reservoir fluid properties when experimental laboratory data are not readily available. Although several models have been published for different oil fields, there is a lack of studies addressing the Brazilian pre-salt region. Hence, in this paper we compared twenty empirical correlations for the determination of the solution gas-oil ratio, oil formation-volume-factor, and under-saturated oil viscosity for Brazilian pre-salt oil samples collected from the Campos Basin region, originally evaluated by Elias and Trevisan (2016). From our statistical results, some models presented good estimation performances when compared to said reference’s results. In fact, through a statistical analysis, Al-Shammasi (2001)’s correlation proved to be the best estimation method for solution gas-oil ratio, whereas Al-Marhoun (1985) and Beal’s (1946) correlations were deemed the most accurate for the prediction of oil formation-volume-factor and under-saturated oil viscosity, respectively.