Permeability petroleum

This is extremely low, since a typical permeable petroleum reservoir formation or rock may have a permeability on the order of as much as 1 darcy or 1000 millidarcies, or as little as, say, 10 darcies or 10 millidarcies, or conceivably even 10 darcies or 1 millidarcy, but which is still many orders of magnitude greater than membrane permeabilities or mobilities. 

The extent of fluid loss is dependent on the porosity and thus the permeability of the formation and may reach approximately 10 t/hr. Because the fluids used in petroleum technology are in some cases quite expensive, an extensive fluid loss may not be tolerable. Of course there are also environmental reasons to prevent fluid loss. 

The slurry should be designed to allow the fluid loss of the formation to be squeezed into the respective formation. Low-permeability formations can have a formulation of the slurry with an American Petroleum Institute (API) fluid loss [68] of 100 to 200 ml/30 min, whereas high-permeability formations... 

Petroleum and chemical engineers perform oil reservoir simulation to optimize the production of oil and gas. Black-oil, compositional or thermal oil reservoir models are described by sets of differential equations. The measurements consist of the pressure at the wells, water-oil ratios, gas-oil ratios etc. The objective is to estimate through history matching of the reservoir unknown reservoir properties such as porosity and permeability. 

Figure 18.26 Observed and calculated bottom-hole pressure and reservoir pressures at layers 7 and 8 for the 2" SPE problem using 7 permeability zones [reprinted from the Journal of the Canadian Petroleum Technology with permission].

Kirtland, B.C. and Aelion, C.M., Petroleum mass removal from low permeability sediment using air sparging/soil vapor extraction impact of continuous or pulsed operation, J. Contam. Hydrol., 41, 367-383, 2000. 

Gall, B.L. Maloney, D.R. Raible, C.J. "Permeability Damage to Artificially Fractured Cores," NIPER- Final Report, National Institute for Petroleum and Energy Research, Bartlesville, OK, May 1988. 

Similarly, in 3D-radial geometries of interest for petroleum engineers, an equivalent wellbore radius re is defined. The near-wellbore region, including radially distributed wormholes from rw up to re, is infinitely permeable and therefore becomes a mere radial extension of the wellbore itself. Equation 2 can be used to calculate the pseudodecrease of the skin when an undamaged primary porosity formation of permeability k0 includes wormholes as described hereabove ... 

Clay minerals, inevitably present in a petroleum formation, are sensitive to the type and concentration of ions contained in the well fluid filtrate lost to the reservoir. This sensitivity is demonstrated by a reduction in the permeability caused by the well fluid filtrate flowing through the core under investigation. 

Dietz, D. N., 1970, Pollution of Permeable Strata by Oil Components In Water Pollution by Oil (edited by R Hepple), Elsevier Publishing Co. and the Institute of Petroleum, New York. 

Stone, H. L., 1973, Estimation of Three-Phase Relative Permeability and Residual Oil Data Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 53-61. 

Thermally enhanced extraction is another experimental approach for DNAPL source removal. Commonly know as steam injection, this technique for the recovery of fluids from porous media is not new in that it has been used for enhanced oil recovery in the petroleum industry for decades, but its use in aquifer restoration goes back to the early 1980s. Steam injection heats the solid-phase porous media and causes displacement of the pore water below the water table. As a result of pore water displacement, DNAPL and aqueous-phase chlorinated solvent compounds are dissolved and volatilized. The heat front developed during steam injection is controlled by temperature gradients and heat capacity of the porous media. Pressure gradients and permeability play a less important role. 

Norris, R. D. and Dowd, K. D., 1993, In-Situ Bioremediation of Petroleum Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Soil and Groundwater in a Low-Permeability Aquifer In Bioremediation Field Experience (edited by R E. Flathman and D. E. Jerger), CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. 

---