Comparison of interwell connectivity predictions using percolation, geometrical, and Monte Carlo models

Reservoir connectivity is often an important consideration for reservoir management. For example, connectivity controls waterflood sweep efficiency and it affects decisions concerning well placement and spacing. The uncertainty of sandbody distributions, however, can make interwell connectivity prediction extremely difficult. Percolation models are a useful tool to simulate sandbody connectivity behavior to estimate interwell connectivity.This study applies a percolation method to estimate interwell connectivity. Using results derived by Andrade, King, and others for fluid travel time between locations in a percolation model, we develop a method to estimate interwell connectivity. Four parameters are needed to use this approach: the net-to-gross ratio p_sand, the typical sandbody size, reservoir length and well spacing. To evaluate this new percolation method, the results are compared to results from geometrical models, Monte Carlo, and reservoir simulation.These methods were applied to estimate interwell connectivity for three non-communicating stratigraphic intervals in Monument Butte oil field, Utah. The results suggest that the percolation method can estimate the probability of interwell connectivity reliably for thin intervals for any values of p_sand, well spacing, and reservoir length. The geometrical model also performs well, but can only be applied in fields where the well spacing is less than one-half of the sandbody size.The proposed method requires that the reservoir interval for evaluation be sufficiently thin so that 2D percolation results can be applied. For thick intervals or heterogeneous sandbody distributions, the percolation method developed here is not suitable because it assumes thin layers. Future percolation research will be needed to adapt this new method to 3D cases.     

Pile Driving Analysis for Top Hammering and Bottom Hammering

Piles are used for platform foundations and other offshore structures. Pile driving performance is predicted and analyzed using the wave equation analysis method. In general, the hammering point can be any part of the pile and the same analyses used for hammering at the top of the pile (top hammering) can be used for pile driving by hammering at the bottom of the pile (bottom hammering). Based on the numerical analyses in this research including residual stresses in the pile, there is little difference between the predictions of pile penetration per hammer blow by single- or multiple-blow analyses when soil resistance is low, such as 10 blows/m. The same is true for top hammering and bottom hammering when soil resistance is low. However, when soil resistance is high compared to that of the pile-hammer system, single-blow analysis predicts early refusal for top hammering and unrealistically high pile penetration for bottom hammering. Therefore, multiple-blow analysis, which considers residual stresses, should be used for better understanding of realistic pile driving performance and predictions. Additionally, this study shows that gravity is another controlling factor for pile driving in low-resistance soil.     

Reservoir oil bubblepoint pressures revisited; solution gas–oil ratios and surface gas specific gravities

A large number of recently published bubblepoint pressure correlations have been checked against a large, diverse set of service company fluid property data with worldwide origins. The accuracy of the correlations is dependent on the precision with which the data are measured. In this work a bubblepoint pressure correlation is proposed which is as accurate as the data permit.Certain correlations, for bubblepoint pressure and other fluid properties, require use of stock-tank gas rate and specific gravity. Since these data are seldom measured in the field, additional correlations are presented in this work, requiring only data usually available in field operations. These correlations could also have usefulness in estimating stock-tank vent gas rate and quality for compliance purposes.     

A non-classical third-order shear deformation plate model based on a modified couple stress theory

A non-classical third-order shear deformation plate model is developed using a modified couple stress theory and Hamilton’s principle. The equations of motion and boundary conditions are simultaneously obtained through a variational formulation. This newly developed plate model contains one material length scale parameter and can capture both the size effect and the quadratic variation of shear strains and shear stresses along the plate thickness direction. It is shown that the new third-order shear deformation plate model recovers the non-classical Reddy-Levinson beam model and Mindlin plate model based on the modified couple stress theory as special cases. Also, the current non-classical plate model reduces to the classical elasticity-based third-order shear deformation plate model when the material length scale parameter is taken to be zero. To illustrate the new model, analytical solutions for the static bending and free vibration problems of a simply supported plate are obtained by directly applying the general forms of the governing equations and boundary conditions of the model. The numerical results show that the deflection and rotations predicted by the new plate model are smaller than those predicted by its classical elasticity-based counterpart, while the natural frequency of the plate predicted by the former is higher than that by the latter. It is further seen that the differences between the two sets of predicted values are significant when the plate thickness is small, but they are diminishing with increasing plate thickness.