Study of the Effect of Relative Permeability and Residual oil Saturation on Oil Recovery

Abstract

Depletion of the production and the low recovery factor are major challenges faced in petroleum industry. The recovery factor and the lifetime of a well are strongly affected by the reservoir properties such as permeability, porosity, residual oil saturation and the water breakthrough time. This research is done to investigate the influence of the relative permeability on oil recovery. Simulations are done for different relative permeability curves and various residual oil saturations. The main focus is the impact on total flow rates and water breakthrough time. The reservoir simulator Rocx in combination with OLGA is used as the simulation tool. The results show that the total oil production and the water breakthrough time are strongly affected by the relative permeability and residual oil saturation. The impact of relative permeability is much higher than the residual oil saturation in petroleum processing.