Modeling of formation damage due to asphaltene deposition in near wellbore region using a cylindrical compositional simulator

Asphaltene deposition in surface facilities, wellbore and near wellbore region poses a chronic problem during oil production processes. It reduces permeability significantly by blocking pore throats as well as wettability alteration toward oil-wet In this study, near wellbore damage due to asphaltene deposition is addressed. A numerical approach has been followed to investigate the impacts of asphaltene deposition in near wellbore region using an Iranian crude oil sample. An IMPEC (Implicit Pressure and Explicit Compositions) compositional simulator has been developed in cylindrical coordinates. Three mechanisms of asphaltene damage including porosity reduction, permeability reduction and wettability alteration are taken into account, and the impact of each mechanism is individually discerned. It is assumed precipitated asphaltene is a pure dense liquid and it is determined by LLE calculation using PR-EoS. The reduction in permeability is correlated with porosity reduction using a power law relation. To model wettability alteration, instantaneous wettability dependent properties (relative permeability, capillary pressure and residual saturations) are determined by a weight averaging between before/after deposition state. By assuming porous media is a bundle of capillary tubes, a weight factor is suggested which is sensitive to asphaltene particle size and their orientation on the surface and calculated dynamically during the simulation. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is done to investigate the effect of model parameters. It is found that the wettability alteration is the main cause for the reduced production rate. Wettability alteration could reduce oil production even up to several times more than porosity and permeability reduction. The results also reveal that at early time of production, most deposition occurs in the vicinity of the well but as time elapses, the maximum deposition point expands gradually to farther areas from the wellbore.