Successful simulation of solution gas drive in heavy oils using conventional modeling

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Abstract
Detailed investigations into the production behavior of heavy oil reservoirs under foamy solution gas drive have been conducted extensively in the past. Historically, two approaches have been used to explain and model the solution gas drive in heavy oil reservoirs. The first approach is the base of foamy oil models in which solution gas drive is governed by parameters such as compressibility, viscosity, nonequilibrium phenomena, and the supersaturation. In the second approach, conventional modeling, which we show to be suitable for the history matching and prediction of the production data and macroscopic modeling of a series of depletion experiments (using a live combination of heavy oil and methane gas in a three-dimensional rectangular laboratory model), the foamy oil flow mechanism, dispersed flow of gas and the supersaturation are nonexistent. The conventional modeling uses parameters such as critical gas saturation, very low gas relative permeability, and the assumption of no supersaturation in the reservoir.

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