Depletion Performance of Layered Reservoirs Without Crossflow

Abstract

Summary This paper presents a study of the rate/time and pressure/cumulative-production depletion performance of a two-layered gas reservoir producing without crossflow. The gas reservoir has produced for more than 20 years at an effectively constant wellbore pressure, thus giving continuously declining rate/time and pressure/cumulative-production data for analysis. The field data demonstrate that Arps depletion-decline exponents between 0.5 and 1 can be obtained with a no-crossflow, layered reservoir description. Rate-vs.-time and pressure-vs.-cumulative-production predictions were developed from both 2D numerical and simplified tank models of a two-layered, no-crossflow system. These results demonstrate the effects of changes in reservoir layer volumes, permeability, and skin on the depletion performance.