This unit covers the fundamental knowledge a petroleum reservoir engineer needs to know in providing a
qualitative and quantitative description of a hydrocarbon reservoir and how to manage its performance.
The
early
part of the unit, apart from covering basic rock and fluid properties (e.g. porosity, saturation,
gas-oil
ratio
(GoR), gas solubility (Rs), formation volume factor (FVF), etc.), it also defines and discusses concepts
such
the volumetrics, reserves, reservoir drive mechanisms, recovery factor and static fluid distribution in
real
hydrocarbon reservoirs. The unit further covers the fundamentals of reservoir dynamics. Initially, the
Darcy’s
Law and its applications are discussed in details. Then, the Radial Diffusivity Equation (RDE) is
derived
and
used to model fluid flow in porous rocks under various flowing phases. The unit also covers the basics
of
transient well testing of oil wells where the transient solution to RDE is used to analyse the results
of
drawdown and build-up tests in the context of some basic reservoir heterogeneities such the presence of
a
single
sealing fault. The last part of the unit covers the derivation of a new version of RDE using the gas
pseudo
pressure suitable for handling gas flow in porous media. It also covers the derivation of various forms
of
deliverability equation for gas wells and how they can be used to interpret the results of different
types
of
deliverability tests.