Description

Seminar on the Origins, Processes, and Exploitation of Residual Oil Zones

Transition Zone Thinking:

• Our Industry has historically defined two categories of fluids

1. Mobile –free from bonds to the rock and able to move readily within pressure or water-driven flow fields.

2. Immobile –Unable to move within normal pressure or water-driven flow fields.

• There are regions where capillary and surface tension forces allow oil and water to intermix in the mobile phase. This is often referred to as the transition zone and is generally defined as that interval where co-production of oil and water occurs.

• The oil-water-contact (OWC) has been defined in a variety of ways based sometimes on oil cut, often on wireline log parameters but occasionally on other parameters

The industry most often defaulted to an explanation of zones below the oil-water contact as transition zones where it was expected that oil saturations would linearly decay to zero below the OWC

December 9, 2015
Midland Center, Midland, Texas