Effective Mechanisms to Relate Initial Rock Permeability to Outcome of Relative Permeability Modification

Excessive water production is becoming common in many gas reservoirs. Polymers have been used as relative permeability modifiers (RPM) to selectively reduce water production with minimum effect on the hydrocarbon phase. This manuscript reports the results of an experimental study where we examined the effect of initial rock permeability on the outcome of an RPM treatment for a gas/water system. The results show that in high-permeability rocks, the treatment may have no significant effect on either the water and gas relative permeabilities. In a moderate-permeability case, the treatment was found to reduce water relative permeability significantly but improve gas relative permeability, while in low-permeability rocks, it resulted in greater reduction in gas relative permeability than that of water. This research reveals that, in an RPM treatment, more important than thickness of the adsorbed polymer layer (e) is the ratio of this thickness on rock pore radius (er).