One- and two-phase flow during fluid sampling by a wireline tool

Wireline sampling tools withdraw a few litres of fluid from a permeable formation via a small sink probe pressed against the borehole wall. The aim is to recover, quickly and cheaply, a representative native fluid sample. Unfortunately, the formation in the near wellbore region is invaded by mud filtrate, and withdrawal of nonnative fluid initially is inevitable. It is therefore of interest to estimate the proportion of native fluid in the sample stream, as a function of time.Semi-analytical calculations of one- and two-phase sampling flows are presented, for the special case of constant total fluid mobility in the limits of very deep or very shallow invasion. Both the interaction of the initially cylindrically symmetric invasion profile with the spherically symmetric flow and the capillary shock-forming dynamics of two-phase flow are found to control the character of sample composition variation. The wide variety of sample stream composition histories is displayed.