VISCOSITY CORRELATION FOR DEAD, LIVE AND UNDERSATURATED CRUDE OILS.

The predictive accuracy of the existing correlations used to estimate dead, live and undersaturated oil viscosities, was tested against 1270 data points. The relative performance of each correlation was determined using statistical methods. It was found that Beal's correlation gave accurate results for dead oil viscosity. For live oil viscosity, Chew and Connally correlation proved to be more accurate than the others. This correlation was extended to cover a wide range of solution gas-oil ratio and new equations were developed to estimate the slope (B) and the intercept (A). For undersaturated oil viscosities, none of the available correlations yielded satisfactory results. Therefore, a new correlation was developed from plotting values of (P-Pb) versus ( mu - mu p) on log-log paper. The plots revealed a series of straight lines of a constant slope. Each line represented oils of a particular API gravity. The new correlation showed excellent results when tested against the measured data.