Revisiting Current Techniques for Analyzing Reservoir Performance: A New Approach for Horizontal-Well Pseudosteady-State Productivity Index

The objective of this paper is to revisit currently used techniques for analyzing reservoir performance and characterizing the horizontal-well productivity index (PI) in finite-acting oil and gas reservoirs. This paper introduces a new practical and integrated approach for determining the starting time of pseudosteady-state flow and constant-behavior PI. The new approach focuses on the fact that the derivative of PI vanishes to zero when pseudosteady-state flow is developed. At this point, the derivative of transient-state pressure drop and that of pseudosteady-state pressure drop become mathematically identical. This point indicates the starting time of pseudosteady-state flow as well as the constant value of pseudosteady-state PI. The reservoirs of interest in this study are homogeneous and heterogamous, single and dual porous media, undergoing Darcy and non-Darcy flow in the drainage area, and finite-acting, depleted by horizontal wells. The flow in these reservoirs is either single-phase oil flow or single-phase gas flow