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Geological Society, London, Special Publications; 1995; v. 84; p. 73-80;
DOI: 10.1144/GSL.SP.1995.084.01.08
© 1995 Geological Society of London

Reservoir Characterization

Gas-oil capillary pressure measurements at reservoir conditions: effect of interfacial tension and connate water saturation

Daniel Longeron, François Kalaydjian & Charles Bardon

Institut Français du Pétrole, BP 311, 92506 Rueil-Malmaison, France

This paper describes laboratory equipment and procedures aimed at determining drainage gas-oil capillary pressure functions under reservoir conditions. Two series of capillary drainage tests (porous plate method) were performed with sandstone core samples using binary mixtures of methane/n-heptane at different equilibrium pressures, leading to very wide variations in the gas-liquid interfacial tension (IFT) values. Measurements were performed first without connate water (two-phase conditions) and then in the presence of connate water saturation (three-phase conditions). This study has shown that the gas-oil capillary pressures measured at different levels of IFT and without connate water can be transformed into one capillary pressure function, Pc/IFT, down to IFT = 3.7 mN/m. Below this value, the capillary pressures measured were significantly lower than those estimated by the Young-Laplace equation. In the presence of connate water, the gas-oil capillary pressures were always higher than the ones measured without water saturation. The difference increased when gas saturation increased and gas-oil IFT decreased. Finally, this paper showed that it is not valid to deduce three-phase capillary pressure from two-phase measurements.