Retrograde condensation frequently occurs during the development of gas condensate reservoirs. The loss of productivity is often observed due to the reduced relative permeability to gas as condensate accumulates near the well bore region. How to describe the condensate blockage effect exactly has been a continuous research topic. However, up to now, the present methods usually over-estimate or underestimate the productivity reduction due to an incorrect understanding of the mechanism of flow in porous medium, which inevitably results in an inaccurate prediction of production performance. It has been found in recent numerous theoretical and experimental studies that capillary number and non-Darcy flow have significant influence on relative permeability in regions near the well bore. The two effects impose opposite impacts on production performance, thus leading to gas condensate flow showing characteristics different from general understanding. It is significant for prediction of performance in gas condensate wells to understand the two effects exactly. The aim of the paper is to describe and analyze the flow dynamics in porous media accurately during the production of gas condensate reservoirs. Based on the description of three-zone flow mechanism, capillary number and non-Darcy effect are incorporated in the analysis of relative permeability, making it possible to describe the effect of condensate blockage. The effect of capillary number and inertial flow on gas and condensate relative permeability is analyzed in detail. Novel Inflow Performance Relation (IPR) models considering high velocity effects are formulated and the contrast analysis of different IPR models is conducted. The result shows that the proposed method can help predict the production performance and productivity more accurately than conventional methods.
