Best Practices for Waterflooding Optimization

Improve Oil Recovery in Mature Fields

M ost mature sandstone reservoirs

feature natural aquifer drive,
artificial water drive, or a combination
produces at high water cut, commingled
water injection usually leads to ineffec-
tive water cycling from the injectors,
high-water-cut wells. The change in
liquid-flow direction will benefit the in-
jected water turning to the poorly swept
of the two. These mature fields generally flowing preferentially through the high- region or bypassed remaining oil to ex-
are characterized by high water cut and permeability thief zones and back to the pand sweep volume, achieving the goal
high recovery efficiency. This paper surface from the producers. of improved ultimate recovery.
presents technologies and best practices Using the same injecting wellbore,
to improve oil recovery in mature fields zonal water injection can enhance Subdividing the Injection/Production
through waterflooding optimization. water-injection rate arbitrarily in low- Unit. This application addresses the in-
These technologies have proved practical permeability, low-production, and low- terlayer heterogeneity of multilayer res-
and cost-effective. water-cut production zones while re- ervoirs that has developed through the
ducing the water-injection rate of adoption of a commingled injection/
Introduction medium-high permeability, high-water- production strategy. Because of the in-
Although chemical enhanced-oil-recovery cut production zones. Thus, the applica- terlayer permeability contrast, the in-
(EOR) technologies such as polymer flood tion of this technology can achieve the jected water swept the oil in the high-
and alkali/surfactant/polymer (ASP) flood goal of expanding sweeping efficiency in permeability interval preferentially, re-
can improve oil recovery by 10 and 20%, order to improve oil recovery. sulting in abundant oil remaining in the
for waterflooded sandstone reservoirs, low-permeability-production interval.
respectively, they are expensive and are Changing the Direction of Fluid Flow. Subdivision of the injection/production
not applicable in most mature fields at The basic principle is to change the orig- unit groups the pay sand with similar res-
a low oil price. A major problem for wa- inally fixed injection/production-fluid- ervoir properties and helps improve the
terflooded fields is that, with increased flow direction to sweep the remaining adaptability of well spacing and the well
water/oil ratio (WOR), the cost of process- oil in bypassed high-oil-saturation areas. pattern. To ensure its economic feasibil-
ing produced fluid soars to exceed the This goal is achieved through converting ity, the process should use all available
breakeven mark. As a result, many wells injectors into producers or vice versa. shut-in wells.
are forced to be shut in; in some instances, In practice, some injectors are shut in
the entire field may be suspended. while others are left inactive or regular Cyclical Water Injection. The basic mech-
conversion between injectors and pro- anism of cyclical water injection is the
Waterflooding-Optimization ducers is conducted in order to change manual establishment of pressure pulsing
Methods fluid-flow direction, achieving expanded in order to change the shape, position, and
The technologies discussed in this sec- sweep efficiency. size of the dead oil. The process is realized
tion are effective generally for multilayer, through alternatively opening or shutting
heterogeneous sandstone reservoirs with Water Shutoff To Improve Areal in the injectors periodically, which makes
high permeability contrast. Sweeping Volume. This application full use of compressibility effects and
addresses the challenge of lateral het- capillary- and gravity-dominated cross-
Zonal Water Injection. This is the erogeneities resulting from the perme- flows. Cyclical injection has significant po-
most widely applied water-injection- ability contrast of various facies sands. tential in heterogeneous reservoirs with
optimization technology. In a multilay- This technique seeks to change the orig- permeability contrast with light, high-
ered reservoir, early water encroach- inal areal waterflooding direction to compressibility fluids. Field application
ment along thief zones often occurs. constrain ineffective water injection by of cyclical water injection indicates that
During the mature stage, when the field shutting in the high-fluid-production, additional oil recoveries in the range of
0.5–5% can be achieved with a significant
reduction in water cut.
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights
of paper SPE 186431, “Waterflooding Optimization: A Pragmatic and Cost-Effective Evaluation Methods
Approach To Improve Oil Recovery From Mature Fields,” by X.G. Lu, SPE, and J. Xu, One issue with these water-injection-
C&C Reservoirs, prepared for the 2017 SPE/IATMI Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference optimization methods is how to assess
and Exhibition, Bali, Indonesia, 17–19 October. The paper has not been peer reviewed. the potential gains from such applica-

For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at [Link]/jpt.

58 JPT • JANUARY 2019

 Injector
tions quantitatively. In conventional wa-
terflooding applications, the quantifica- Producer A Producer B
tion process relies on reservoir simulation
based on reservoir characterization and
modeling. However, geological mod-
eling and history matching are time-
consuming, and subsurface uncertainties Oil Pay
can have significant effects on the evalu- Low–medium permeability
ation. Here, two practical, reliable meth- (5–100 md)
ods are presented that are applied easily.
Oil Pay Medium–high permeability
Waterdrive Performance Curve. For a (100–300 md)
mature, waterflooded field, the water-
drive performance curve is an effective
High permeability
method to predict estimated ultimate re- Aquifer Oil Pay
(greater than 500 md)
covery. The prediction is based on linear
or log-linear relationships between cu-
mulative oil production and another of Fig. 1—Schematic of commingled water injection to three sand units.
a range of variables, including cumula-
tive water production, cumulative liquid culated in the early production stage, es- analysis, the water injector was recom-
production, WOR, and water cut. Several timation of the changes in water cut in pleted with a single-string adjustable ec-
types of waterdrive performance curves response to changes in recovery during centric water distributor. The technology
exist; among the most widely applied of the later stages of production is possible. enhanced water injection to the top flow
these are Type A and Type B. Equations Conversely, estimating ultimate recovery unit while constraining injection to the
used in these curve types are provided in is possible on the basis of the trend of lower two flow units. Both Well A and Well
the complete paper. water cut in response to the increase in B responded to the injection adjustment
oil-recovery efficiency from the reservoir. immediately. By May 2006, production
Tong’s Curve. Tong’s theoretical curve rates of Well A and Well B had reached
describes a certain relation between ul- Best-Practice Examples 566 and 725 BOPD, respectively, a signifi-
timate recovery factor (ER), recovery ef- for Selected Methods cant increase from the prezonal water-
ficiency of stock tank oil initially in place The complete paper contains best-practice injection rates.
(STOIIP) (R), and water cut (fw) of any wa- examples for all five waterflooding-
terdrive reservoir. The recovery charac- optimization methods discussed previ- Changing the Direction of Fluid Flow.
teristics of each reservoir are expressed ously; examples for two of these methods The T Block SII11-12 produces oil from a
by their different values of ER; therefore, are provided here. sandstone reservoir with a high permea-
the fw/R curves are different from one an- bility of 1600 md and contains a STOIIP
other. In Tong’s curve, ER is taken as the Zonal Water Injection. The sandstone of 30.8 million bbl. Its production has
module, and a group of fw/R curves can be reservoir in M Field consists of three entered the mature stage with 54% re-
plotted on a normalized coordinate paper. flow units with average permeability covery and 97.9% water cut.
Basic conditions for application of varying from 50 to greater than 500 md. A water-injection-optimization cam-
Tong’s curve include the following: Well A had been producing solely from paign was launched in 2009. The
◗ Aquifer-drive or waterflooded the low-permeability top pay sand. By injection/production pattern was modi-
reservoirs must be present. comparison, Well B produced from all fied from line cutting to peripheral line in-
◗ Water cut vs. recovery-efficiency three pay sands (Fig. 1). jection, consisting of four producers and
pattern cannot be identified until Initially, commingled water injection five injectors. The injection/production
water cut reaches 25% or recovery was performed. By April 2005, Well B well spacing increased from 250 to 450 m.
efficiency of STOIIP reaches 10%. was producing at 253 BOPD, while the The new well pattern led to a change
◗ Heavier oil generally follows rules of production rate of Well A was 116 BOPD, in water-injection direction and helped
water-cut vs. recovery efficiency on down from 471 BOPD in May of 2003. expand sweep volume to recover inter-
the left of the Tong’s-curve template, Integrated reservoir characterization well remaining oil and attic oil further.
while that of lighter or volatile oil is and production-logging-tool analysis in- The water-injection-optimization activ-
located to the right. dicated that injected water entered the ity resulted in a significant increase in
Tong’s curve is often used to estimate two medium- to high-permeability lower production rate from 110 to 194 BOPD
recovery factors by comparing field- flow units mainly and had a negligible ef- and a slight drop of water cut from 97.9
production data with the theoretical re- fect on Well A producing from the low- to 96.7%. Average production rate per
lationship between water cut and recov- permeability top flow unit. The rapid pro- well increased from 28 to 49 BOPD. Ul-
ery efficiency of STOIIP. If the waterdrive duction decline in Well A was the result of timate recovery factor increased from
recovery factor of a reservoir can be cal- pressure depletion. On the basis of this 58 to 68%. JPT

JPT • JANUARY 2019 59