Reservoir Engineering

Since, interfacial phenomena govern the entrapment of oil @ pore-scale, would it remain feasible to understand the fundamental relations between capillary pressure, brine saturation, wettability, interfacial tension and pore-structure, at least, to some extent @ laboratory-scale using experimental investigations?

If so, can we deduce the details on the space- and time-dependent distributions of oil and brine (associated with the reservoir volume)?

Feasible to capture the influence of the relatively higher pressure in the non-wetting phase, during drainage, where oil displacement of resident brine remains controlled by the drainage Pc-Sw relation of the reservoir?

Also, feasible to capture the way, the oil gets retreated along the separate imbibition (rewetting) Pc-Sw curves, when the wetting-phase pressure gets increased relative to that of the non-wetting phase pressure?

Feasible to capture the details on capillarity-driven and wettability-driven processes that remain resisted by viscous/shearing drag and snap-off of non-wetting phase ganglia, that essentially makes the reoccupation of the pores by brine to remain to be incomplete; and to subsequently quantify the oil in the pore network that constitutes the residual non-wetting phase saturation?

Dr Suresh Kumar Govindarajan,

Professor [HAG]

IIT Madras

13-March-2025