During the development of oil and gas fields, the permeability of the reservoirs decreases due to a decrease in reservoir pressure and an increase in effective pressure, as a result of which significant reserves of oil and gas remain in the reservoir. To predict the rate of decrease in oil production rates during field development and to respond quickly, it is necessary to know the law of permeability decrease with an increase in effective pressure. Existing methods for describing the change in the permeability of rocks were analyzed in the paper. Numerical analysis of the results of core studies from previously published papers and the results of field well testing on the examples of the north Perm region oil fields showed that in both cases, regardless of the type of rock and the type of reservoir, the change in permeability can be described by the same equations (exponential and power-law). Obtained equations can be used to predict changes in the permeability of terrigenous reservoirs of the north Perm region oil fields. At the same time, according to the results of well testing, an intensive decrease in permeability is observed with an increase in effective pressure. Analysis of the nature of permeability changes using the Two-Part Hooke’s Model showed that significant irreversible deformations are currently taking place in the formations of the oil fields under consideration. Predicting the change in permeability from effective pressure can allow to optimize the development of oil deposits.

The apparent rocks permeability, measured under cyclic loading, tends to constantly decrease with each subsequent loading/unloading cycle, the main reason for this, the researchers consider irreversible deformations. However, this understanding is not complete, as attention is not paid to the method of determining the permeability. Under cyclic loading, permeability is measured by fluid flow, which is able to carry colloids and they can clog pore throats and reduce permeability, but this is not taken into account in the study of porous rocks. Colloidal migration is also not taken into account in routine core tests, although colloids can significantly reduce the apparent permeability of rocks during migration. Also it is impossible to determine exactly which of the factors (mechanical compaction or colloid migration) contributed to the change in apparent permeability. The purpose of this research is to provide experimental evidence that under cyclic loading, permeability decreases not only due to mechanical compaction, but also due to colloid migration within the porous medium. For this task, a methodology has been developed, the feature of which is that between loading/unloading cycles, the core is blowning with a large pressure gradient. It has been established that under cyclic loading, the apparent permeability of rock samples changes as a result of colloid migration up to 20 %. The dynamics of permeability becomes unpredictable and weakly depends on the confining pressure when changing the direction and regime of the gas flow. At the end of the multi-cycle confining pressure test, the apparent permeability of 3 out of four core samples, despite the decrease during injection, recovered to the initial value which also confirms that the apparent permeability has affected by colloid migration. A mechanism for changing the apparent permeability during gas injection and cyclic confining pressure is proposed. The outcomes indicate that colloid migration should be taken into account during core tests not only in cyclic loading but also in routine coreflooding tests.

During coreflooding under stationary conditions, permeability is determined by the Darcy formula; thus, the apparent permeability is determined, which characterizes the average hydraulic conductivity of the core, but does not take into account the processes occurring at the microlevel. Transient processes during fluid injection regime change are important for understanding the evolution of permeability and underlie such phenomena as permeability degradation and its hysteresis. Our paper presents the coreflooding methodology and the results showing that during changes in injection conditions, the permeability of samples can significantly decrease due to the migration of colloids. In the developed methodology, coreflooding conditions exclude the influence of other factors on permeability, such as creep, the chemical reactions of rocks and fluids, and chemical mobilization of colloids. It has been established that the decrease in permeability occurs only when fluid is injected through the core, which is indirect evidence of pore blockage by colloids. The article also attempts to evaluate the effect of pore pressure on the sensitivity of the porous medium permeability to the amount of injected fluid. A decrease in pore pressure leads to a more intense decrease in permeability during injection, which most likely indicates additional mobilization of colloids, while the narrowing of pore channels does not affect permeability. Analysis of coreflooding results showed that porous media with lower permeability are more sensitive to colloid migration and pore pressure changes. It has also been found that the sensitivity of porous media to colloid migration is greatly affected by the pore pressure gradient, while media with higher permeability are less sensitive to colloid migration.

In this paper, we present a mathematical model to predict the evolution of rock permeability depending on effective pressure during oil production. The model is based on the use of the results of well testing data from wells operating in the oil fields of the Perm–Solikamsk region in the north of the Volgo Ural oil and gas province. Dependences of the change in flow characteristics in the reservoir on the effective pressure were established. We performed a comparative assessment using permeability and effective pressure data that were normalized to dimensionless forms of k/k_o and P/P_o. The factors and their influence on the nature of the change in permeability from the reservoir pressure were determined. Depending on the type of rock, its composition, initial permeability, and bedding conditions, we determined the limits of variation of the constants in empirical equations describing the change in the permeability of rocks from the effective pressure. The mathematical model we developed enables the prediction of the change in permeability of rocks during oil production from reservoirs on the basis of reservoir properties such as initial permeability, initial reservoir pressure, average bedding depth, net-to-gross ratio, and initial effective rock pressure.

The paper presents the results of the experimental investigation of carbonate reservoir rocks subjected to quasistatic and nonlinear dynamic loads. During the quasistatic loading the zones of linear elasticity were determined. Dynamic loading of samples was performed at several frequencies and load amplitudes using a testing system. There were two zones found in which the elastic modulus changes nonlinearly in terms of dynamic load frequency. While the frequency of the dynamic load increases from 0 to 10 Hz the dynamic elastic modulus rises according to logarithmic law; while the frequency increases from 10 to 60 Hz elastic modulus rises according to a power law for each load amplitude. The amplitude of the longitudinal strain and phase shift decreases with increasing frequency of the dynamic load. Under the higher strain rates the rock gets stiffer in comparison with rock subjected to smaller strain rate dynamic loading. Saturation of rock samples with distilled water flattening the dependencies of dynamic Young’s modulus on frequency.