Underground Gas Storage Construction in Gas Fields with Oil Ring and Edge and Bottom Water: A Case Study

Underground Gas Storage Construction in Gas Fields with Oil Ring and Edge and Bottom Water: A Case Study

Natural gas

Underground gas storage

Sensitivity analysis

Gas industry

Porous materials

Petroleum prospecting

Petrophysics

Most underground gas storages (UGSs) are constructed in gas fields, but there are few UGS examples constructed in a gas field with an oil ring and edge/bottom water (OR-EBW-gas field). In areas where suitable gas fields are not available for USG development, existing gas fields with oil ring and edge and bottom water have to be used to construct UGS to balance the seasonal natural gas consumption and supply. Compared with conventional gas reservoirs, fluid distribution is much more complicated in OR-EBW-gas fields and there exist different modes for storage space plan, which brings up more uncertainty for the UGS construction. In this work, an active UGS construction in an OR-EBW-gas field is studied using a comprehensive compositional numerical model. The operation parameters are firstly determined through detailed sensitivity studies. UGS construction schemes employing different porous medium spaces are then investigated to determine the optimal one. The results indicate that UGS constructed using gas cap area is the optimal scheme. After 20 I/W cycles, the predicted working load of the UGS is 1.726108 m3, which reaches the designed value of 1.7108 m3. The incremental cumulative water production and oil production are 0.21104m3 and 0.42104m3 respectively. The study shows that it is crucial to prevent the intrusion of edge water for UGS construction in an OR-EBW-gas field. The oil ring is not suitable for UGS construction due to its poor petrophysical property, but can be used as a natural barrier to separate gas cap and edge water. The formation pressure needs to be improved when the gas cap, oil ring and edge water are selected as USG construction zones. However, it will also lead to a significant increase in the formation pressure near the main control fault, which leads to a high risk of fault failure. 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

2022

Huang, Xiaoliang

Wanyan, Qiqi

You, Junyu

Xu, Hongcheng

Yin, Nanxin

Song, Lina

journalArticle

15567036

10.1080/15567036.2021.2025171