Correlations for predicting solution gas/oil ratio, oil formation volume factor, and undersaturated oil compressibility

Careful estimation of reservoir fluid behavior is necessary for evaluating of hydrocarbon reserves, predicting future performance, designing production facilities, and planning methods of enhanced oil recovery. Over the last decade increased attention has been focused on models for predicting reservoir fluid properties from reservoir pressure, temperature, crude oil API gravity, and gas gravity. The present study develops new empirical PVT correlations for estimating the solution gas/oil ratio, bubblepoint oil formation volume factor, and isothermal oil compressibility above bubblepoint for crude oils. Multiple regression analysis was used in developing those correlations. A total of 175 PVT analyses of crude oil samples collected from different Kuwaiti oil fields were used to develop the new correlations. Some of the recently developed correlations and those frequently used in the literature were compared to the new correlations. The correlations developed in this study exhibit significantly lower average absolute error and standard deviation than the other published correlations.