Journal of Porous Media 11(5), xxxxxx (2008)

Numerical Modeling of the Gas-Oil Gravity

Drainage Process in Stratified and Fractured
Porous Media

M. Nabipour, M. M. Zerafat, and S. Ayatollahi

School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
E-mail: Shahab@shirazu.ac.ir
ABSTRACT
The saturation profiles in homogeneous and nonhomogeneous layered
porous media have been analyzed, and the oil recovery rates as well
as the ultimate recovery have been calculated. A two-phase flow model
is set up and solved numerically to produce the oil saturation profile
and estimate the rate of oil recovery in layered porous medium under
the gas-oil gravity drainage process. The model was further extended
to model very high permeability layers stacked in between two dense
layers to simulate horizontally fractured media. This numerical scheme
reveals the importance of capillary pressure in the vicinity of the different
layers for the calculation of the saturation profile. Oil entrapment in the
matrix on top of the more permeable layers is responsible for the low
oil recovery efficiency from fractured reservoirs under gravity drainage.
Several different tests, including the use of a single high-permeability
layer, a single low-permeability layer, and a low on top of a high and
high on top of a low permeable stratum, are performed using the proposed
technique, qualitatively.

1
Received November 17, 2006; Accepted May 29, 2007
c 2008 Begell House, Inc.
Copyright

Nabipour et al.

NOMENCLATURE

g
k
kri
kro
p
pc
Pcm
Pcf

gravity deceleration (m/s2 )

absolute permeability (darcy)
relative permeability (darcy)
proportionality constant in
relative permeability
pressure (atm)
capillary pressure (atm)
matrix capillarity (atm)
fracture capillarity (atm)

1. INTRODUCTION
The mathematical modeling of flow in porous media, particularly with the ever-increasing power of
computers, is playing a fundamental and increasingly
important role in the prediction of petroleum reservoir performance, groundwater supply, and subsurface
contaminant migration. A critical underlying problem
in these models is the need to predict the behavior of fluid in stratified structures and heterogeneous
geological formations.
Geological surveys clearly indicate that all the sedimentary rocks beneath the surface of the earth are
made up of different layers, each of which has its
own characteristics such as porosity, permeability, and
wettability. The oil saturation profile during gas-oil
gravity drainage (GOGD) in layered porous media
plays an important role in oil recovery efficiency.
Forecasting the behavior of a reservoir is one of the
most important but complicated tasks for petroleum
engineers. Knowledge of oil content of a reservoir is
essential in planning optimum depletion of a given
field. There are many important forces governing fluid
flow in the reservoir such as gravity, capillarity, and
inertia forces (Richardson and Blackwell, 1971).
GOGD is a recovery process in which gravity acts
as the main driving force and gas replaces the de-

S
t

saturation (%)
time (s)

Greek Symbols

Corey exponent

viscosity (cP)

density (kg/m3 )

porosity (%)

potential

pleted volume. In other words, it is a gas-oil displacement process in which gravity forces are dominating.
It may occur in primary stages of oil production
(gas cap expansion drive or gravity segregation) as
well as in supplemental stages, where gas is supplied
from an external source and injected into the reservoir
(Hagoort, 1980).
Dumord and Schols (1974) discovered that residual
oil saturation after gas invasion in highly permeable
sandstone cores containing connate water could be
extremely low. They also experienced very low residual oil saturations in the sand pack gravity drainage
experiments.
Hagoort et al.s (1984) experiments confirmed that
the gravity drainage mechanism could be a very effective oil recovery process in water-wet, connate waterbearing reservoirs, which lowers the remaining oil saturations in the media. Whether these low saturations
are indeed reached in the lifetime of an oil reservoir
depends on the magnitude of the gravitational force
compared to capillary forces, the functionality of the
oil relative permeability, and the reservoir geometry
and heterogeneity.
Dykstra (1978) presented a good example of oil
production by strictly free-fall gravity drainage in
the Lakeview Pool, Midway Sunset oil field. In a

GOGD Process
field study, King and Stiles (1970) demonstrated a
very high displacement efficiency of 87% by gravity
drainage in the East Texas Hawkins reservoir. The
work by Chatzis and Ayatollahi (1993) revealed that
the GOGD process is a very effective mechanism for
the recovery of waterflood residual oil under immiscible conditions.
Evidence shows that gravity drainage is one of the
most effective mechanisms of an oil field development. Although the gravity drainage mechanism is
important, characterizing and modeling the process
are still a great challenge. Almost all the gravity
drainage models are complicated. Some of the models
do not have analytical solutions and have to be solved
numerically (Bennion et al., 1998).
Reservoir heterogeneity has long been recognized
as an important factor in determining reservoir performance, and description of heterogeneity is a crucial
step toward understanding it. The GOGD process in
layered porous media is unstable under certain conditions. Even for two layers, gas fingers through the
less permeable top layer to reach the more permeable bottom layer very quickly (Correa and Firoozabadi, 1996). Under these circumstances, the lowpermeability zone holds a high portion of the wetting
phase (Chatzis and Ayatollahi, 1995).
Goddin et al. (1966) used a finite difference numerical model to study the effects of viscous and
capillary forces on recovery in a field-scale model of a
two-layer, water-wet sandstone reservoir.
Gharbi et al. (1996) investigated the fluid flow in
a highly heterogeneous reservoir to study the detailed
sensitivity of the displacement performance. The results showed that the degree and structure of the
heterogeneity of the reservoir have significant effects
on the efficiency of immiscible displacement using
horizontal wells. Therefore the long horizontal wells
in highly heterogeneous reservoirs do not necessarily
guarantee improved oil recovery (Gharbi et al., 1996).
Correa and Firoozabadi (1996) have provided a criterion for instantaneous gas fingering toward the more
permeable layer. A nonlinear form of the diffusivity

3
equation was used to study gas-oil drainage in layered
systems. Numerical examples showed that recovery
performance of layered systems, unlike homogeneous
media, is sensitive to capillary pressure.
Virnovsky et al. (1998) found that the capillarytrapped oil saturation has a tendency to increase in the
direction of injection into production wells. The proposed model is useful in the calculation of recoverable
oil content and the optimization of a waterflooding
strategy that minimizes oil entrapment in heterogeneous reservoirs.
On the basis of Darcys law and the film flow
theory, Schechter and Guo (1996) developed a new
mathematical model to describe the free-fall gravity
drainage process. A simple nonlinear governing equation in dimensionless form was formulated and solved
numerically as a function of dimensionless time.
Kewen and Horne (2003) mentioned that mathematical models set up to predict oil production accurately
by gravity drainage have been a few. They tried to
find an analytical model that determines the ultimate
oil recovery by free-fall gravity drainage. Also, an
empirical oil recovery model was proposed accordingly to match and predict oil production, and an
approach was also followed to infer capillary pressure
curves from the oil production data by free-fall gravity
drainage.
Tertiary GOGD and the oil bank movement were
also studied by Chatzis and Ayatollahi (1995) in
stratified media. The experimental results showed no
oil trapping in the vicinity of the low- to highpermeability media for water-wet sand packs due to
the water capillary fringe in that zone. The oil followed by gas fingered down to the bottom of a
high-permeability layer resulted in very low residual oil saturation in the gas-invaded low-permeability
zone on the top.
Nabipour et al. (2007) also investigated the enhanced oil recovery efficiency of the mechanism of
thermally assisted gas-oil gravity drainage for secondary and tertiary oil recovery on a fractured laboratory model.

Nabipour et al.

Furthermore, there were a few citations in the literature about the modeling of GOGD in stratified
media. In addition, by changing the permeability contrasts, it is possible to mimic the horizontal fracturing
in the oil zone and its effects on the oil saturation profile and recovery efficiency during the GOGD process.
In this investigation, we tried to find out the basic
effect of macroscopic heterogeneity, including the horizontal fractures in layered porous media. Therefore
a mathematical model has been derived and solved
numerically.
2. NUMERICAL MODELING
Oil recovery prediction during the GOGD process
in heterogeneous, layered porous media as well as
naturally fractured reservoirs is a challenging problem. It is worth mentioning that most of the oil
reservoirs, especially in the Middle East, are layered
and fractured ones (Hernandez, 2002). One of the
basic methods by which we can model a heterogeneous porous medium is to divide the heterogeneous
part into smaller homogenous portions with different parameters and model the interaction of different
portions (Correa and Firoozabadi, 1996).
In gravity drainage, flow occurs vertically inside the
layers by gravity force downward; however, the capillary force acts in the opposite direction. Depletion
continues as long as gravity forces are dominant and
will be hindered when the two forces, gravity and capillary, balance. The basic rules of fluid flow in porous
media have been used to model this process. Darcys
laws for oil and gas phases are, respectively,

u0 =

kkro o
o z

(1)

ug =

kkrg g
g z

(2)

The continuity aligns for oil and gas, assuming constant density and porosity, are

uo
so
+
=0
z
t

(3)

ug
sg
+
=0
z
t

(4)

Since gas viscosity is typically very little compared

with the oil viscosity, the viscous pressure force in the
gaseous phase is neglected, and then g /z 0.
The principal align governing the behavior of a
fluid in porous medium is derived by the combination
of Darcys law and the continuity align, which gives

so
k
pc
g

kro
+ o
= 0 (5)
t
o z
z
gc
The main governing align is three-dimensional, but
the radial dependence can be ignored as the main
changes are in the gravitational direction, the zdirection, which simplifies the model to a transient
one-dimensional align. A schematic view of a typical
GOGD process is shown in Fig. 1.
The boundary conditions on top and at the bottom
of the homogenous layer during the process are

Figure 1. Schematic view of gravity drainage in a porous

medium

GOGD Process

so
|z=top = 0
z

(6)

The initial condition on all the layers is

so |t=0 = 1 swi

(7)

Numerical modeling of heterogeneous reservoirs

undergoing an immiscible GOGD process (Pooladidarvish and Firoozabadi, 2000; Pedera et al., 2002;
Hernandez, 2002) requires capillary pressure and relative permeability to be known as functions of saturation.
The Corey-type (Correa and Firoozabadi, 1996)
relationship for relative permeability is employed in
the following:

Kro =

0
Kro

S Sro
1 Sro Srw

(8)

A typical capillary pressure correlation was also utilized for this purpose:

Pc = Pc0

S Sro
1 Sro Srw

k kr p0c t
2z
2 p0c k kr t
(11)
b=

g k kr t
c=
2z
It is assumed here that the pore size distribution ()
and residual saturation have been similar for both
high- and low-permeability layers.
a=

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

To mimic a horizontal fracture, the layered model
was extended by increasing the permeability contrast
between layers. A sample layered porous medium
was assumed, where the highly permeable layer was
modeled in between two low-permeability media.
At first, the oil saturation profiles for the homogenous high- and low-permeability media are produced
separately, as shown in Figs. 2 and 3. In the numerical
examples, the properties of the different layers and
fluids are given in Table 1.

(9)

To solve the governing align for stratified media,

the finite difference method was used. Owing to the
nonlinearity of the governing align, it needs to be
linearized for the nonlinear terms within the numerical
aligns. The main nodal align was found after using
finite difference aligns. It is rearranged as follows:

!
Sin1
n+1
n1
Si+1
a n1 + c Si
Si

!
Sin1
n+1
n1
+ a n1 + c Si
Si1
Si

+ Sin+1 = Sin

b Sin
Sin2

(10)

Figure 2. Saturation profile, single layer, without fracture,

k=1

Nabipour et al.
Table 1
Fluid and media properties

Property
Permeability, low-permeability layer (darcy)
Permeability, high-permeability layer (darcy)
Fracture permeability (darcy)
Oil viscosity (cP)
Oil density (kg/m3 )
Pore size distribution constant
Residual oil saturation (Sro )
Residual water saturation (Srw )
Porosity
kr0
pco

Value
1
10
100
30
0.9
2
0.3
0.15
0.3
6
100

k = 10

4. Saturation profile of double-layered, highpermeability layer on the top of a low permeable one

Figures 4 and 5 depict the oil saturation

profiles for the double-layered models for two
different cases: the high-permeability layer on the
top of low (Fig. 4) and the low-permeability
layer on the top of high (Fig. 5). Gas fingering phenomenon from the top low-permeability

medium to the bottom high-permeability one,

shown in Fig. 5, is responsible for low sweep efficiency. Calculated oil recovery efficiencies as a function of time, shown in Fig. 6, confirm the effects
of the order of the layers on recovery efficiency in
stratified media.

Figure 3. Saturation profile, single layer, without fracture,

Figure

GOGD Process

7
The ultimate oil recovery factor for case 3 (highpermeability layer on the top of the low-permeability
one) is comparable to that of case 2 (single lowpermeability layer), where the height of capillary rise
in the lower part was sufficient. However, no capillary
rise was detected in the vicinity of high- to lowpermeability media.
However, for the opposite case (low-permeability
layer on the top), the capillary rise in the top layer
results in lower ultimate oil recovery efficiency compared to case 1.

Figure

5. Saturation profile of double-layered, lowpermeability layer on the top of a high permeable one

The results shown in Fig. 6 also indicate that in

the early stage, the oil recovery rate for case 1 is
higher than that of case 2 for the same period of
time. The faster oil recovery rate from the top highly
permeable layer results in higher recovery efficiency
for the first case. These two recovery efficiencies for
cases 1 and 2 reach the same value (the cross point
in Fig. 6), and thereafter, the trend gets reversed. This
trend in the later stage due to gas breakthrough caused
by fingering into the bottom highly permeable zone
(case 2) allows faster oil production.

Figure 6. Comparison of recovery profiles for homogenous and layered media

Nabipour et al.

3.1. Fractured Tests

It is known that the gas fingering in the lowpermeability zone as well as capillary discontinuity
affect the oil production rate significantly. Horizontal
fractures are well known for capillary discontinuity
and bypassing oil in the matrix. Although fractures
are commonly considered as highly permeable and
distorted conduits, it is possible to preserve the capillary continuity if some special conditions exist (Festoy
and Van Golf Racht, 1989; Horie et al., 1990; Stones
et al., 1992; Sajjadian et al., 1998).
To model the horizontal fractures, the permeability
contrast of stratified media was increased dramatically; matrix permeability was set to be 1 darcy,
while the fracture permeability is as high as 100
darcy. Different cases included single or double highly
permeable thin layers, in a homogenous medium to
mimic the horizontal fracture. Figures 79 show the
predicted saturation profiles for a fractured model in-

Figure 8. Saturation profile for fractured media, fracture

location at 45 cm

Figure 7. Saturation profile for fractured media, fracture

Figure 9. Saturation profile for fractured media, fracture

location at 15 cm

location at 75 cm

GOGD Process
cluding a single horizontal fracture. The properties of
these models are also shown in Table 1.
The saturation profile in the fracture is significantly
different from that in the matrix; the saturation remained almost the same as in the previous cases.
It is worth mentioning that the capillary continuity
was maintained for these cases, as was stated already.
Comparing the results shown in Figs. 79 suggests
that the location of the fracture affects the saturation
profile. It is shown in Fig. 9 that as the fracture
intervenes with the capillary height zone, the liquid
saturation in the fracture cannot attain its residual
value compared to the results shown in Fig. 7.
This numerical modeling has the capability of managing the layer properties such as capillary pressure
and relative permeability. To test the effects of capillary pressure contrast in the fracture and matrix and
also check the capillary continuity between the layers,
the following capillary pressure correlations (Firoozabadi, 1993; Hernandez, 2002) were employed:

1
So Sro
Pcm =
2.91.17 ln
(12)
101.325
1Sro

Pcf =

Figure 10. Saturation profile, single fractured, fracture

location at 30 cm

1
2
0.2150.0081 ln (So0.1)
(13)
101.325

Figure 10 shows the saturation profile of the wetting phase using capillary pressure contrast in the
matrix and fracture, compared with Fig. 7, where the
capillary pressure of layers is assumed to be the same.
The resulting saturation profiles show that the amount
of trapping of the wetting phase in the vicinity of
matrix to fracture has been increased.
3.2. Double-Fractured Case
To test the multifractured media and the effects of
their location on the saturation history as well as the
recovery efficiency, several tests have been done on
double-fractured models. As was mentioned in the
single-fracture case, the permeabilities of the matrix
and fracture are in the order of 1 and 100 darcy,
respectively. Figures 11 and 12 show the predicted

Figure 11. Saturation profile, double fractured, fracture

locations at 30 and 60 cm

10

Nabipour et al.
liquid saturation profile in double-fractured cases to
indicate the effect of fracture locations.
Figure 13 indicates that if the capillary continuity
exists in the system, the closer the fractures are to the
top, the more the drainage and ultimate recovery will
be, but when the fractures get close to the bottom, this
trend gets reversed. The capillary continuity is maintained in these tests by utilizing high capillarity for
both matrix and fracture. Therefore the existence of
fractures in a given system result in the enhancement
of recovery rate; that is, in single and nonfractured
cases, the rate of recovery is less than that of the
double-fractured case, as shown in Fig. 13.
In fact, the horizontal fractures can help enhance
the recovery only if the drainage of the medium
is managed so that the connectivity between matrix
blocks is not lost.

Figure 12. Saturation profile, double fractured, fracture

locations at 45 and 75 cm

Figure 14 shows that the amount of oil recovery decreases as the fracture-matrix capillary pressure differentiates to a significant amount, as was mentioned for
the single-fractured case (Fig. 10). Figure 14 clearly
indicates that the assumption of capillary continuity
discredits as the capillary pressure distinction between

Figure 13. Comparison of recovery efficiency for no fracture, single-fracture, and double-fracture cases in case of capillary
continuity

GOGD Process

11
the matrix and fracture increases as a result and gets
away from our assumption of continuity.
Recovery profiles are given in Fig. 15 for the
case in which the matrix and fracture have different
capillary pressure values. As the capillary pressure
contrast increases, the chance of capillary continuity
decreases, and the recovery decreases, too. This also
happens as the fractures get closer to the bottom
of the model, as shown in Fig. 15. It is worth
remembering that the existence of fractures that do
not support connectivity results in a dramatic trapping
of the wetting phase and hence the reduction of
ultimate recovery.

4. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION

Figure 14. Saturation profile, double fractured, fracture

location at 4575 cm

It is important to note that oil recovery by gravity

drainage in a fractured model strongly depends on
capillary continuity between matrix blocks (Labastie,
1990). The experimental results (Chatzis and Ayatollahi, 1995) showed that the fluid distribution during
the GOGD process in the stratified media is mostly
affected by the permeability contrast between the lay-

Figure 15. Comparison of recovery efficiency for no fracture, single-fracture, and double-fracture cases in the case of
capillary discontinuity

12

Nabipour et al.

ers. It is also worth mentioning that the calculated

oil saturation profile using a numerical model (Correa and Firoozabadi, 1996) for layered porous media
showed that oil tends to accumulate in the vicinity of
the low-permeability to high-permeability zone.
An experimental model was also used here to verify
the proposed mathematical model by measuring the
oil recovery efficiency for both oil-wet and waterwet cases. A sand pack model of 1 m height was
tested and drained under a free-fall gravity drainage
test, and the measured recovery rate was compared
with the calculated data obtained from modeling. As
seen in Fig. 16, the recovery profiles in either case
are comparable to a promising degree. The saturation
history of gas-oil displacement in a stratified twodimensional transparent sand pack model was also
investigated (Chatzis and Ayatollahi, 1995) to visualize the gas fingering and wetting phase trapped in the
low-permeability layer. The results given in Fig. 17
are comparable with the calculated saturation profiles
found in this work.

5. CONCLUSION

1. Simulation results showed that gas-oil gravity

drainage in a layered medium is completely different from that observed in a homogenous one;
some properties of the layers, such as permeability and arrangement, play an important role in
the estimation of oil recovery efficiency.
2. Capillary pressure forces tend to trap part of the
liquid during the GOGD process in the vicinity
of the low- to high-permeability media due to
the discontinuity of the gas-oil contact and the
instability of gas movement due to gas fingering,
which can be verified using the visualization of
the saturation profile in two-dimensional models.
3. The adopted numerical method for layered media
enabled us to extend it to model the horizontally fractured media using high permeability and
capillary pressure contrast.

Figure 16. Comparison of experimental and modeling recoveries

GOGD Process

13
gas fingering as well as wetting phase trapping
in the stratified model result in low ultimate
recovery compared with the layered model with
capillary continuity.

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Figure

17. Visualization of gas-liquid front movement

during the gravity drainage process in a stratified porous
medium

4. The location of the horizontal fractures affects

the recovery efficiency, especially if it intervenes
with the capillary heights of the porous medium.
5. The presence of fractures in the medium could
enhance the recovery efficiency if the continuity
is preserved in the fractures through production
management.
6. If the connectivity is lost between matrix and
fracture, the ultimate recovery decreases to a
significant amount.
7. The results were verified using an experimental
recovery profile from an unconsolidated sand
pack model. Experimental results showed that

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