Walter B. Fair, Jr.,
Interamerican Petroleum Consultants
Pressure transient tests are commonly used in production engineering to estimate reservoir pressure, well productivity, permeability and skin damage. In reservoir engineering, transient tests are also used to estimate the distribution of reservoir properties and presence of boundaries. During the last several decades deconvolution methods have been developed to remove wellbore effects and better estimate reservoir parameters using transient tests, but application for production evaluation have been scarce. In this paper deconvolution of pressure transient data is used to remove reservoir effects and determine inflow rates and wellbore fluid volumes, providing a better understanding of wellbore phenomena of interest in well maintenance, production engineering and artificial lift evaluation. The basic mathematical background is presented, along with real examples showing how the results add insight into better understanding wellbore performance, including the evaluation of pump-off controller or timer settings and wellbore integrity.