Process of water invasion from Aquifer into oil reservoir or gas reservoir due to pressure depletion.

The aquifer drive can be weak or strong depending on aquifer volume and water mobility comparing to mobility of oil and gas and contact geometry.

Fig. 1. Aquifer Drive schematics

The most accurate way to simulate Aquifer Expansion (or shrinkage) is full-field 3D Dynamic Flow Model where Aquifer Expansion is treated as one of the fluid phases and accounts of geological heterogeneities, gas fluid properties, relperm properties and heat exchange with surrounding rocks.

Unfortunately, in many practical cases the detailed information on the Aquifer is not available.

Besides many practical applications require only knowledge of one element of the Aquifer Expansion process – a pressure support and not the sweep in the invaded zones.

This allows building an Aquifer Drive Models using analytical methods.

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