Effect of Permeable Contacts on the Performance of a Gas-Oil Gravity Drainage Mechanism in a Stack of Matrix Blocks

In the gas invaded zone of a well fractured carbonate reservoir, gravity drainage mechanismplays the main role in expelling oil from dense, low permeability matrix blocks. whenever theactive mechanism is gravity drainage, reinfiltration and capillary continuity phenomena notablyinfluence the rate and amount of oil recovery from matrix blocks. in the current research, sixexperiments were performed to study the effects of a permeable contact area (between two blockslocated on top of each other) on reinfiltration and capillary continuity. two of the experimentswere performed using single blocks of 30 and 60 cm height, whilst others were stacks of two 30cm high blocks. results of the experiments reveal that, by increasing the permeable contact areabetween blocks. due to capillary continuity and reinfiltration, there will be more communicationbetween them, consequently, both ultimate oil recovery and production rate will improve. it isalso noticeable that, if the permeable contact area is approximately greater than 20% of the totalblock surface area, the stack of blocks behaves analogous to a unique block with a height equalto that of the stack. the outcome of the present work, along with data from other studies, suchas the effects of horizontal fracture apertures and fracture dips. can be utilized in order to havea better understanding of block to block effects. by this, the modeling of the gravity drainagemechanism, while injecting gas into fractured carbonate formations. would be improved.