COMPARISON BETWEEN KLINKENBERG-CORRECTED AND WATER PERMEABILITY: A REVIEW

Abstract

Absolute liquid permeability value is required as an input for dynamic model initialization for reservoir simulation studies. Industry standard practice is to obtain either Klinkenberg-corrected permeability values or liquid permeability values. Klinkenberg-corrected permeability values are obtained from gas permeability measurement and corrected for Klinkenberg effect, on the other hand liquid permeability value is obtained from laboratory measurement of brine permeability. The theoretical assumption is that both of these permeability measurement should produce similar values but experimental measurements show that Klinkenberg-corrected permeability values are usually higher than water permeability values. The amount of time and cost spend on determining these two values for each core sample can be reduced if a correlation is developed describing the relationship between these two values of permeability for specific region. Water permeability values of specific region can be predicted using the established correlation thus saving time and cost to determine the value of permeability experimentally. There are handful of studies regarding the correlation between Klinkenberg-corrected and water permeability however most of the studies are region-specific and narrow. Furthermore the factors for the difference between Klinkenberg-corrected and water permeability values are still unclear and without evident proof. This article provides a review of this specialized area of study from the early to recent contributions on the relationship between Klinkenberg-corrected and water permeability values and its factors.