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Gas Condensate

Reservoir Engineering
Dr. Mohamed Ali Badawi
Building A, Room 319
Petroleum Engineering & Gas Technology Department
The British University in Egypt
mohamed.alibadawi@bue.edu.eg

Lecture 1
INTRODUCTION

• There are five main groups of reservoir fluids:


volatile oil, black oil, wet gas, retrograde
condensate, and dry gas.
• Gas condensate is usually located in the deep strata
under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions.
• It is mainly composed of methane and derives its
high molecular weight from the quantity of heavy
hydrocarbon fractions.

Dr. Mohamed Ali Badawi


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Typical gas condensate phase envelope
The condensate fluid is
very complex due to fluid
behavior and properties.
This reservoir is usually
located between the
critical temperature and
the cricondentherm on
the phase diagram of the
reservoir fluid

Dr. Mohamed Ali Badawi


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Gas condensate production

Gas-condensate production may be thought of


as being intermediate between oil and gas. Oil
reservoirs have a dissolved gas content in the
range of zero (dead oil) to a few thousand
cubic feet per barrel,

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In gas reservoirs 1 bbl of liquid (condensate) is
vaporized in 100,000 SCF of gas or more, and
from which, therefore, a small or negligible
amount of hydrocarbon liquid is obtained in
surface separators.

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Gas-condensate production is predominantly
gas from which more or less liquid is
condensed in the surface separators, hence the
name gas-condensate. the liquid is sometimes
called by an older name, distillate, and also
sometimes simply oil because it is an oil

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Gas condensate reservoirs may be
approximately defined as those that
produce light-colored or colorless stock
tank liquids with gravities above 45° API at
gas-oil ratios in the range of 5000 to
100,000 SCF/bbl.

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• What has been said previously applies to
reservoirs initially in a single phase. The initial
gas-oil ratios of production from wells completed
either in the gas cap or in the oil zone of two-
phase reservoirs depends on:
• The compositions of the gas cap hydrocarbons
• The oil zone hydrocarbons
• The reservoir temperature and pressure.
• The gas cap may contain gas-condensate or dry
gas, whereas the oil zone may contain black
oil or volatile oil.

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• Naturally, if a well is completed in both the gas and
oil zones, the production will be a mixture of the
two. Sometimes this is unavoidable, as when the
gas and oil zones (columns) are only a few feet in
thickness.
• Even when a well is completed in the oil zone only,
the downward coning of gas from the overlying gas
cap may occur to increase the gas-oil ratio of the
production.

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Plot showing trend of increase of gas-oil ratio versus depth

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The dashed line marked "oil" indicates the
general trend to increased solution gas in oil
with increasing pressure (depth), and the
envelop to the lower right encloses those
discoveries that were of the gas or gas-
condensate types.

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Complexity of gas-condensate
reservoirs fluid flow
• Fluid flow in gas-condensate reservoir is very complex and
involves phase changes, phase redistribution in and around
the wellbore, retrograde condensation, multiphase flow of
the fluid (oil and gas), and possibly water.

• Gas-condensate fluid usually emerges as a single gas phase


in the reservoir at exploration time. Gas condensation to
liquid phase is a result of pressure reductions from the
reservoir to the producing well and production facilities.
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• Retrograde condensation is defined as the
isothermal condensation owing to pressure
reduction lower than the dew-point pressure of the
primary hydrocarbon fluid.

• The range of liquid production in gas-condensate


reservoirs is 30-300 bbl/MMSCF (barrels of liquid
per million standard cubic feet of gas).

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• Moreover, the ranges of temperature and pressure
for the gas condensate reservoirs typically are 200-
400oF and 3000-8000 psi, correspondingly. The
temperature and pressure values accompanied by
the broad range of compositions result in the gas-
condensate mixtures, which demonstrate
complicated and different thermodynamic trends.

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Condensate loss
• The main part of the condensed liquid in the
reservoir is unrecoverable and considered as
condensate loss because the ratio of liquid viscosity
to gas viscosity is fairly high and also the formation
has lower permeability to liquid in the gas-
condensate reservoirs.
• Condensate loss is one of the most economical
concerns because the liquid condensate holds
valuable intermediate and heavier constituents of
the original hydrocarbons that are trapped in the
porous medium
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Characterization of gas-condensate
systems
• Characterization of gas-condensate systems is a complex
task for petroleum experts and researchers, because
variation of the fluid composition and multiphase flow
in the formation significantly obscures the analysis of
well tests.
• In the research area of gas-condensate reservoirs, well-
test interpretation, pressure-volume-temperature (PVT)
analysis, well deliverability, and multiphase flow, have
been the common challenges for a long time.

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