Abstract:

Naturally fractured reservoirs are very important for the oil industry and have been thoroughly studied in the literature. Historically in the well testing community, pressure transient analysis has been the main method to characterize the rock and fluid properties of a naturally fractured reservoir.

In this study we investigated the temperature behavior in a well producing from a naturally fractured reservoir. We derived early- and late-time solutions that describe the temperature behavior under the assumption that the diffusion term can be neglected. To determine the range of applicability of these approximations we developed a numerical model that takes into account both diffusion and convection heat transport mechanisms as well as heat flow between fracture and matrix. It was found that only four parameters are needed to describe the early and late-time temperature behavior if the pressure behavior is already known. Additionally it was found that the normalized dimensionless temperature behaves remarkably similar to the dimensionless pressure, showing two parallel straight lines in a semilog plot with slope equal to one half and with separation related to the ratio of heat storage between the fracture medium and the reservoir. Furthermore it seems that the transition period that connects the two straight lines is given by another straight line with slope equal to one quarter.

In conclusion, the temperature measurements were found to be a robust and reliable source of information to characterize a double porosity reservoir and the transition period that appears in the temperature transient seems to be a promising area of research.

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Copyright 2016, Jose Eduardo Ramirez Lopez Miro: Please note that the reports and theses are copyright to their original authors. Authors have given written permission for their work to be made available here. Readers who download reports from this site should honor the copyright of the original authors and may not copy or distribute the work further without the permission of the author, Jose Eduardo Ramirez Lopez Miro.