RESEARCH ARTICLE
Study on the Flow Characteristics of Shengli Oilfield Super Heavy Oil

The rheological properties of oil severely affect the determination of percolation theory, development program, production technology and oil-gathering and transferring process, especially for super heavy oil reservoirs. This paper illustrated the basic seepage morphology of super heavy oil in micro pores based on its rheological characteristics.

The non-linear flow law and start-up pressure gradient of super heavy oil under irreducible water saturation at different temperatures were performed with different permeable sand packs. Meanwhile, the empirical formulas between start-up pressure gradient, the parameters describing the velocity-pressure drop curve and the ratio of gas permeability of a core to fluid viscosity were established.

The results demonstrate that temperature and core permeability have significant effect on the non-linear flow characteristics of super heavy oil. The relationship between start-up pressure gradient of oil, the parameters representing the velocity-pressure drop curve and the ratio of core permeability to fluid viscosity could be described as a power function.

Above all, the quantitative description of the seepage law of super heavy oil reservoir was proposed in this paper, and finally the empirical diagram for determining the minimum and maximum start-up pressure of heavy oil with different viscosity in different permeable formations was obtained.