Engineered Depressurisation of Waterflooded Reservoirs: Representative Relative Permeability Measurements

This paper describes a determination of critical gas saturations and relative permeabilities relevant to the depressurisation of two North Sea fields. A series of reservoir condition coreflood experiments and associated numerical simulations is described. Four experiments were conducted with aged cores and fluids and each comprised of a waterflood, followed by depressurisation at different rates. The laboratory data included extensive three-phase, in-situ saturation measurements which were used to derive gas relative permeabilities through the simulations.