A novel material-balance approach for estimating in-place volumes of gas and water in gas reservoirs with aquifer support

Abstract

Applications of the traditional static material-balance method in gas reservoirs become a challenge with production maturity due to variability in aquifer influx, infill drilling, and production-operational changes in offset wells, among others. Besides, some existing modeling approaches involve a trial-and-error method, making the solution outcomes nontrivial. This study proposes a new methodology for analyzing production data involving water-drive gas reservoirs. The main findings of this study include the following: (1) A straight-line plot that yields gas and water in-place volumes, (2) A modified-(pav/z)* plot exhibits a straight-line with an x-intercept of gas initially-in-place, similar to that in a conventional-(pav/z) plot, (3) A new definition of degree of aquifer support that is quantifiable using production data. Synthetic data verified the proposed modeling approach, whereas a field dataset provided validation.