SPE 59700

Using Wellhead Sampling Data to Predict Reservoir Saturation Pressure

Xiangyi Yi, Xinjiang Petroleum Institute

Copyright 2000, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 2000 SPE Permian Basin Oil and Gas
Recovery Conference held in Midland, Texas, 2123 March 2000.
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Abstract
The PVT properties of reservoir fluids, which include
saturation pressure, gas oil ratio, volume factor, viscosity, and
compressibility, are key parameters to a series of calculations
such as reserve and production, in which saturation pressure is
more important in oil field development. The main method to
determine the saturation pressure is from bottomhole sampling
data.
This paper attempts to develop a method to predict the
saturation pressure based on the information from wellhead
sampling. The method presented in this paper is first to exploit
the combination relation of the fluid specific gravity and gasoil ratio, then calculate saturation pressure and plot the
relationship curve. The accuracy of the saturation pressure
predicted by the method has been found very good.
The method introduced in the paper can solve some
problems that saturation pressure can not be determined
because samples are not available, it reduces the possibility of
production reduction because of sampling. It can reduce the
amounts of samples from deep wells, which can lower costs.
Introduction
The PVT properties of reservoir fluids, which include
saturation pressure, gas oil ratio, volume factor, viscosity, and
compressibility, are key parameters to a series of calculations
such as reserve and production, in which saturation pressure is
more important in oil field development.
In oil field development, saturation pressure is a very
important parameter. Typically, it is determined by subsurface

sampling in laboratory. Though this method is direct and

reliable, the drawbacks are also obvious:
(1) The sampled wells must be uniform distributed on a
plane;
(2) Using a small choke controls production for a certain
period of time to reach stabilization;
(3) Bad conditions or unacceptable samples alter the
working system that influences the normal production
at some of sampled wells.
All of those will affect the normal production. For
example, there are thirty subsurface oil samples ever year in
Kelamay Oil Filed in China, which requires more than fifty
sampled wells . If the production is forty tons per well, whose
choke is 4 mm (the sampled wells are usually high-yield wells
in reservoir). Sampling requires changing the choke size from
4 mm to 1.5 mm, therefore, the production will reduce 50%.
Typically, one week is the shortest period of controlling
producing, then there are nearly 2,000 tons as production
reduction from the fifty wells. Therefore, a number of
petroleum engineers look for an indirect method that can get
saturation pressure by exploiting plenty of data from
laboratory. The many methods are recently introduced in
literature 1-3. However, those methods are good to some
specific oil reservoirs, and they can not ideally validated by
case histories. Therefore, it is necessary to use the actual cases
in Kelamay oil field to study this field.
The Fundamentals of the Method
Saturation pressure is direct proportion with the volume of
dissolved gas and reservoir temperature. Then the capability
that gas is dissolved into oil is controlled by three factors.

(1) Pressure
(2) Temperature
(3) Oil-gas PVT properties.
Given the oil-gas characters, as temperature is constant,
the volume of dissolved gas increases with pressure; but as
pressure keeps constant, it reduces with increasing of
temperature. To arbitrary pressure and temperature, the more
specific gravity of gas and less specific gravity of oil (the
characters of two phases are closer), the greater the solubility

XIANGYI YI

is. However, it must be noted that the solubility should be

adjusted when the component of non-hydrocarbon exceeds
five percent1 .
The method introduced in this paper to predict saturation
pressure is based upon oil and gas properties from wellhead
sampling. Then the saturation pressure is determined from
regression of exploiting the oil-gas characters. Table 1
compares the predicted saturation pressure based on the
information from wellhead with that fro m PVT experiment of
samples from T2 2 formation of Fault Block #188.

From the Table 1, thought the conditions of wellhead

sampling and bottomhole sampling are different, the resulted
saturation pressures are close. However, there are some
differences between saturation pressures resulted from the
wellhead sampling and bottom sampling after all. The main
reason making the differences usually is the fact that wellhead
oil is heavier and wellhead gas is lighter.
The Methodology
The methods used to calculate saturation pressure can be
divided into two categories:
(1) Direct regressing with gas-oil ratio as a function:
(2) The specific gravity of dead oil is considered when
making the gas-oil ratio is a function.

SPE 59700

equation is regressed based on the fields data from Kelamay

Oil fields is

R ro
+ 0.5685 (2)
Pb = 0.22
rg

R ro
55or Pb < 13MPa
when
rg

R ro
+ 0.3.7362 (3)
Pb = 0.166
rg

when

R ro

rg

> 55or

Pb > 13MPa

Application Cases
The examples of the applications of the above equations are
illustrated as follows
1. Zone: Block 188, Layer T22, Well: J187
Pb =6.85MPa
R=34.79m3 / m3 to =46o C
3
Ro =0.8294g/cm rg =1.0098g/cm3
(1) Ratio of dead oil density and gas density

Apparently, the second method is more accurate than the

first one. However, there are great derivations in both methods
verifying by the data from Kelamay oil field.
The method introducing in this paper is: exploiting the
combination relation of the fluid specific gravity and gas-oil
ratio, calculating saturation pressure and plotting the relative
relation curve, finding a relation is controlled into five percent
to ten percent. The equation is

R ro
Pb =
rg

A + b (1)

ro 0.8294
=
= 0.8214
rg 1.0098
(2)

ro
= 28.57
rg

(3) because of

ro
= 28.57 <60, then Pb =6.854MPa
rg

2. Zone: Block 8, Layer T22, Well: J187

Pb =33.4MPa
R=179.33m3 / m3 to =76.8o C
3
ro =0.8509g/cm rg =0.8605g/cm3
(1) Ratio of dead oil density and gas density

Where
Pb is the saturation pressure, Mpa;
R is the gas-oil ratio, m3 / m3
o is the specific gravity of dead oil (normal pressure,
at 20 o C),g/cm3
g is the specific gravity of gas (20 o C, technical
atmosphere), g/cm3
A is statistical constant
b is intercept
So that one can calculate saturation pressure if the oil-gas
specific gravity and density of gas are known. The empirical

ro 0.8509
=
= 0.9888
rg 0.8605
(2)

ro
= 177.33
rg

(3) because of

ro
= 177.33 >60, then Pb =33.173MPa
rg

SPE 59700

USING WELLHEAD SAMPLING DATA TO PREDICT RESERVOIR SATURATION PRESSURE

The Discussion of the Method

(1) The accuracy of predicted saturation pressure is high, so it

can be applied in practice;
(2) It can reduce the amounts of sampling from deep wells (in
period of experiments, it only needs deep-well sampling
from one or two wells with different structural position in
every reservoir, and these wells must be wellhead
sampling at same time for the purposes of verification.),
which can decrease costs and increase production;
(3) The calculation method is simple.
However, Figure 1 is being plotted with the samples from
51 deep wells in six zones of the oil field, which might not be
applicable to all cases. In addition, the data from those wells
with high non-hydrocarbon components were not adjusted,
which may affect the accuracy of the plot.
From the integrated curve, one can find that the linear
trends of high-pressure and low-pressure zones are not
consistent. It is likely caused by the following reasons:

The effect of the solubility of gas with different

properties on the saturation pressure is different.
However, the significance of the influence needs

further investigation.
The influence of temperature on oil-gas ratio of
different reservoir fluids with different properties is
not the same, which needs further study.

Conclusion
Overall, the method introduced in the paper can be applied
in some situations where saturation pressure can not be
determined because a sample is not available, which reduces
the possibility of production reduction because of sampling.
The method also provides a starting point for further study in
the future.

References
1. He, Gensan: Petrophysics, Oil Industry Publication, Beijing, 1984
2. McCain, W.D. Jr.: The Properties of Petroleum Fluids, the first
edition, PennWell Books, Tulsa, 1980
3. Exxon Production Research Company: A Course in Reservoir
Engineering Study Guide, 1987

XIANGYI YI

SPE 59700

Table 1
Well

o
20o C
0.8369
0.8206
0.8600
0.8494
0.8410
0.8205
0.8317
0.8268
0.8365
0.8330

R
m / m3
23.00
24.92
49.00
51.33
26.30
27.93
34.15
35.75
36.00
38.70
3

419
9231
9206
9273

R o /g

o /g

1.0733
1.1532
0.8753
0.9153
0.9993
0.9588
1.0572
1.0587
0.9687
0.9550

20.66
17.73
48.14
47.63
23.04
23.06
29.32
27.92
31.09
33.76

0.8982
0.7116
0.9825
0.9280
0.8716
0.8256
0.8568
0.7810
0.8635
0.8723

Saturation Pressure (Mpa)

Pred.
Lab.
Error
5.114
+0.314
4.800
11.16
+1.059
10.10
5.637
-0.463
6.100
7.019
+0.419
6.600
7.408
-0.782
8.19

Note
wellhead
48 o C
wellhead
45 o C
wellhead
53.8 o C
wellhead
54.5 o C
wellhead
48 o C

0:00

0:00
R*ro/rg<55-60 or Pb<13
Gas-oil ratio*oil-gas specific gravity ration (R * ro/rg)

J189

0:00
Pb=0.5685+0.2200*R*ro/rg

0:00

0:00

0:00
R*ro/rg>55 or Pb>13
0:00

Pb=3.7362+0.166*R*ro/rg

0:00

0:00

0:00
0

10

15

20

25

30

35

Saturation Pressure (Pb, MPa)

Figure 1 The Relationship of Saturation Pressure vs Oil-gas Ratio and Specific Gravity Ratio

SPE 59700

USING WELLHEAD SAMPLING DATA TO PREDICT RESERVOIR SATURATION PRESSURE

Appendix: The Calculation Data of Other Wells

Table 2 - Well Data in Block # 6 Zone T1 2

Well
Name

Pb
MPa

B
m3 / m3

o
At 20 o C

g
-

o /g

Bo /g

Tg
(o C)

J-50
515
J-40
J-48
J-67
140
J-158
6061
J-155

6.5
4.65
4.3
5.0
6.7
4.55
4.45
6.82
3.25

29.72
21.82
19.4
24.40
32.35
27.26
17.39
30.57
15.13

0.9131
0.8914
0.8951
0.8867
0.8910
0.3992
0.9119
0.993
0.884

0.8431
0.9923
0.9580
0.9432
0.8990
0.9445
0.7520
0.9211
0.9720

1.083
0.8983
0.9414
0.9401
0.9911
0.9543
1.2126
0.9985
0.9095

32.19
19
18.26
22.94
32.7
26.01
21.09
29.91
13.76

22.6
21
21.1
22.0
22.5
19.2
20.2
20.4
20.8

Avera
ge
Temp
(o C)
23

Table 3 - Well Data in Block # 5 Zone T1 2

Well
Name
214
376
J-83
5227
J-62
5255
5205
5228
5245

Pb
MPa
19.65
8.90
21.65
13.35
16.43
20.95
14.85
19.00
18.90

B
m3 / m3
99.5
43.7
100.08
57.7
79.27
101.92
68.42
91.49
95.53

o
At 20 o C
0.8750
0.8753
0.8615
0.8677
0.8539
0.8641
0.8653
0.8620
0.8615

g
0.8512
0.8908
0.8419
0.8267
0.8372
0.8769
0.8850
0.8547
0.8897

o /g

Bo /g

1.028
0.9826
1.0233
1.0496
1.0199
0.9823
0.9777
1.0085
0.9683

102.38
42.94
102.41
50.56
80.85
100.12
66.90
92.27
92.5

Tg
(o C)
46.5
44.8
45.5
45.0
45.0
46.0
43.0
46.3
46.0

Average
Temp (o C)
47