IPA12-E-048
PROCEEDINGS, INDONESIAN PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION
Thirty-Sixth Annual Convention & Exhibition, May 2012
DETERMINATION OF RESIDUAL GAS SATURATION AND RELATIVE PERMEABILITY IN
THE MODELING OF THE ABADI GAS FIELD
Masahiko Nomura*
ABSTRACT
Understanding of water encroachment mechanism
from aquifer is one important factor for long-term
field performance prediction, development planning,
and recovery estimation. This paper presents a new
interpretation result of laboratory based residual gas
saturation data, leading to a systematic modeling
approach for relative permeability input in reservoir
simulation.
INTRODUCTION
The residual gas saturation is one of the key
important factors to affect gas recovery, since the
value directly reflects the amount of trapped gas after
water pass through the gas zone from the aquifer
during the long-term production and controls the
speed of aquifer encroachment. The residual gas
saturation is a process dependent parameter and
changes for the different flow scenarios such as
water flooding and water aquifer encroachment
associated with reservoir depletion. The process of
gas displacement by water will be forced imbibition
in areas of high drawdown and approximately
spontaneous imbibition in areas of low drawdown.
Although the subject is still open research area, the
better understanding of fluid flow mechanism is
required for better prediction.
In this paper, we firstly investigate laboratory based
residual gas saturation data (counter current
imbibibtion test and steady state displacement test)
and develop a new type curve for residual gas
saturation estimation as a function of permeability
and capillary number. Second, we develop an
empirical correlation of remaining relative
permeability inputs and show a systematic work
flow to construct a set of relative permeability curves
for reservoir simulation. Future study plans will be
discussed to improve the modeling.
* INPEX Masela Ltd.
RESIDUAL GAS SATURATION
Observation
In this section, the residual gas saturation (Sgr) will be
evaluated based on the interpretation of the available
measurement data. Two different types of
measurement data were available in this study: (1)
counter current imbibition (CCI) and steady state
displacement test (SS). In total 48 data were utilized to
evaluate the residual gas saturation for the Abadi field.
CCI and SS measurements are different in nature,
since CCI measurement is conducted under a capillary
equilibrium condition (spontaneous imbibition) and
SS measurement is under a more viscous force
working condition (forced imbibition). The difference
in displacement process needs to be considered for the
interpretation. Figure 1 shows the Sgr plotted versus
permeabilityfor both CCI and SS measurement data.
From these plots, the followings are observed.

For the CCI test, the residual gas saturation
shows a clear trend to decrease with higher
permeability while the steady state displacement
data has much less dependency on permeability.

As an overall trend, in the lower permeability
range, CCI data shows higher residual gas
saturation than SS data while approaching the
same level in the higher permeability range.
In the following section, Sgr data from both CCI and
SS measurements will be investigated and modeled
based on the interpretation.
Interpretation
Although several empirical equations have been
proposed to predict the trapping gas amount for a
given initial saturation (2003, 2002), the classical
Land’s trapping theory was used throughout this
study. The relationship between Sgr and Sgi can be
written as follows.
(1)