The Use of Tracer Data To Determine Polymer-Flooding Effects in a Heterogeneous Reservoir, 8 Torton Horizon Reservoir, Matzen Field, Austria

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (04) ◽  
pp. 655-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torsten Clemens ◽  
Markus Lüftenegger ◽  
Ajana Laoroongroj ◽  
Rainer Kadnar ◽  
Christoph Puls

Summary Polymer-injection pilot projects aim at reducing the uncertainty and risk of full-field polymer-flood implementation. The interpretation of polymer-pilot projects is challenging because of the complexity of the process and fluids moving out of the polymer-pilot area. The interpretation is increasingly more complicated with the heterogeneity of the reservoir. In the polymer pilot performed in the 8 Torton Horizon (TH) reservoir of the Matzen field in Austria, a polymer-injection well surrounded by a number of production wells was selected. A tracer was injected 1 week before polymer injection. The tracer showed that the flow field in the reservoir was dramatically modified with increasing amounts of polymer injected. Despite short breakthrough times of 4 to 10 weeks observed for the tracer, polymer breakthrough occurred only after more than 12 months although injection and production rates were not substantially changed. The tracer signal indicated that the reservoir is heterogeneous, with high flow velocities occurring along a number of flow paths with a limited volume that are strongly connecting the injection and production wells. By injecting polymers, the mobility of the polymer-augmented water was reduced compared with water injection, and led to flow diversion into adjacent layers. The tracer response showed that the speed of the tracer moving from injection to production wells was reduced with increasing amount of polymer injected. This response was used to assess the changes of the amount of water flowing from the injection well to production wells. After a match for the tracer curve was obtained, adsorption, residual resistance factor (RRF), and dispersivity were calculated. The results showed that, even for heterogeneous reservoirs without good conformance of the pilot, the critical parameters for polymer-injection projects can be assessed by analyzing tracer and polymer response. These parameters are required to determine whether implementation of polymer injection at field scale is economically attractive. Along the flow path that is connecting injection and production well, as shown by the tracer response, an incremental recovery of approximately 8% was achieved. The polymer retention and inaccessible pore volume (IPV) in the reservoir were in the same range as in corefloods. Incremental oil recovery caused by acceleration along the flow path was estimated at approximately 20% of the overall incremental oil production caused by polymer injection and 80% was attributed to improved sweep efficiency.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan-George Davidescu ◽  
Mathias Bayerl ◽  
Christoph Puls ◽  
Torsten Clemens

Abstract Enhanced Oil Recovery pilot testing aims at reducing uncertainty ranges for parameters and determining operating conditions which improve the economics of full-field deployment. In the 8.TH and 9.TH reservoirs of the Matzen field, different well configurations were tested, vertical versus horizontal injection and production wells. The use of vertical or horizontal wells depends on costs and reservoir performance which is challenging to assess. Water cut, polymer back-production and pressures are used to understand reservoir behaviour and incremental oil production, however, these data do not reveal insights about changes in reservoir connectivity owing to polymer injection. Here, we used consecutive tracer tests prior and during polymer injection as well as water composition to elucidate the impact of various well configurations on sweep efficiency improvements. The results show that vertical well configuration for polymer injection and production leads to substantial acceleration along flow paths but less swept volume. Polymer injection does not only change the flow paths as can be seen from the different allocation factors before and after polymer injection but also the connected flow paths as indicated by a change in the skewness of the breakthrough tracer curves. For horizontal wells, the data shows that in addition to acceleration, the connected pore volume after polymer injection is substantially increased. This indicates that the sweep efficiency is improved for horizontal well configurations after polymer injection. The methodology leads to a quantitative assessment of the reservoir effects using different well configurations. These effects depend on the reservoir architecture impacting the changes in sweep efficiency by polymer injection. Consecutive tracer tests are an important source of information to determine which well configuration to be used in full-field implementation of polymer Enhanced Oil Recovery.


Author(s):  
Marcelo F. Zampieri ◽  
Rosangela B. Z. L. Moreno

Developing an efficient methodology for oil recovery is extremely important in this commodity industry, which may indeed lead to wide spread profitability. In the conventional water injection method, oil displacement occurs by mechanical behavior between fluids. Nevertheless, depending on mobility ratio, a huge quantity of injected water is necessary. Polymer injection aims to increase water viscosity and improve the water/oil mobility ratio, thus improving sweep efficiency. The alternating banks of polymer and water injection appear as an option for the suitable fields. By doing so, the bank serves as an economic alternative, as injecting polymer solution is an expensive process. The main objective of this study is to analyze and comparison of the efficiency of water injection, polymer injection and polymer alternate water injection. For this purpose, tests were carried out offset in core samples of sandstones using paraffin oil, saline solution and polymer and were obtained the recovery factor and water-oil ratio for each method. The obtained results for the continuous polymer injection and alternating polymer and water injection were promising in relation to the conventional water injection, aiming to anticipate the oil production and to improve the water management with the reduction of injected and produced water volumes.


2014 ◽  
Vol 695 ◽  
pp. 499-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamad Faizul Mat Ali ◽  
Radzuan Junin ◽  
Nor Hidayah Md Aziz ◽  
Adibah Salleh

Malaysia oilfield especially in Malay basin has currently show sign of maturity phase which involving high water-cut and also pressure declining. In recent event, Malaysia through Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS) will be first implemented an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project at the Tapis oilfield and is scheduled to start operations in 2014. In this project, techniques utilizing water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection which is a type of gas flooding method in EOR are expected to improve oil recovery to the field. However, application of gas flooding in EOR process has a few flaws which including poor sweep efficiency due to high mobility ratio of oil and gas that promotes an early breakthrough. Therefore, a concept of carbonated water injection (CWI) in which utilizing CO2, has ability to dissolve in water prior to injection was applied. This study is carried out to assess the suitability of CWI to be implemented in improving oil recovery in simulated sandstone reservoir. A series of displacement test to investigate the range of recovery improvement at different CO2 concentrations was carried out with different recovery mode stages. Wettability alteration properties of CWI also become one of the focuses of the study. The outcome of this study has shown a promising result in recovered residual oil by alternating the wettability characteristic of porous media becomes more water-wet.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sultan Ibrahim Al Shemaili ◽  
Ahmed Mohamed Fawzy ◽  
Elamari Assreti ◽  
Mohamed El Maghraby ◽  
Mojtaba Moradi ◽  
...  

Abstract Several techniques have been applied to improve the water conformance of injection wells to eventually improve field oil recovery. Standalone Passive flow control devices or these devices combined with Sliding sleeves have been successful to improve the conformance in the wells, however, they may fail to provide the required performance in the reservoirs with complex/dynamic properties including propagating/dilating fractures or faults and may also require intervention. This is mainly because the continuously increasing contrast in the injectivity of a section with the feature compared to the rest of the well causes diverting a great portion of the injected fluid into the thief zone which ultimately creates short-circuit to the nearby producer wells. The new autonomous injection device overcomes this issue by selectively choking the injection of fluid into the growing fractures crossing the well. Once a predefined upper flowrate limit is reached at the zone, the valves autonomously close. Well A has been injecting water into reservoir B for several years. It has been recognised from the surveys that the well passes through two major faults and the other two features/fractures with huge uncertainty around their properties. The use of the autonomous valve was considered the best solution to control the water conformance in this well. The device initially operates as a normal passive outflow control valve, and if the injected flowrate flowing through the valve exceeds a designed limit, the device will automatically shut off. This provides the advantage of controlling the faults and fractures in case they were highly conductive as compared to other sections of the well and also once these zones are closed, the device enables the fluid to be distributed to other sections of the well, thereby improving the overall injection conformance. A comprehensive study was performed to change the existing dual completion to a single completion and determine the optimum completion design for delivering the targeted rate for the well while taking into account the huge uncertainty around the faults and features properties. The retrofitted completion including 9 joints with Autonomous valves and 5 joints with Bypass ICD valves were installed in the horizontal section of the well in six compartments separated with five swell packers. The completion was installed in mid-2020 and the well has been on the injection since September 2020. The well performance outcomes show that new completion has successfully delivered the target rate. Also, the data from a PLT survey performed in Feb 2021 shows that the valves have successfully minimised the outflow toward the faults and fractures. This allows achieving the optimised well performance autonomously as the impacts of thief zones on the injected fluid conformance is mitigated and a balanced-prescribed injection distribution is maintained. This paper presents the results from one of the early installations of the valves in a water injection well in the Middle East for ADNOC onshore. The paper discusses the applied completion design workflow as well as some field performance and PLT data.


2011 ◽  
Vol 365 ◽  
pp. 305-311
Author(s):  
Fu Chang Shu ◽  
Yue Hui She ◽  
Zheng Liang Wang ◽  
Shu Qiong Kong

Biotechnological nutrient flooding was applied to the North block of the Kongdian Oilfield during 2001-2005. The biotechnology involved the injection of a water-air mixture made up of mineral nitrogen and phosphorous salts with the intent of stimulating the growth of indigenous microorganisms. During monitoring of the physico-chemical, microbiological and production characteristics of the North block of the Kongdian bed, it was revealed significant changes took place in the ecosystem as a result of the technological treatment. The microbial oil transformation was accompanied by an accumulation of carbonates, lower fatty acids and biosurfactants in water formations, which is of value to enhanced oil recovery. The microbial metabolites changed the composition of the water formation, favored the diversion of the injected fluid from closed, high permeability zones to upswept zones and improved the sweep efficiency. The results of the studies demonstrated strong hydrodynamic links between the injection wells and production wells. Microbiological monitoring of the deep subsurface ecosystems and the filtration properties of the fluids are well modified, producing 40000 additional tons of oil in the test areas.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
M. J. Pitts ◽  
E. Dean ◽  
K. Wyatt ◽  
E. Skeans ◽  
D. Deo ◽  
...  

Summary An alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) project in the Instow field, Upper Shaunavon Formation in Saskatchewan, Canada, was planned in three phases. The first two multiwell pattern phases are nearing completion. Beginning in 2007, an ASP solution was injected into Phase 1. Phase 1 polymer drive injection began in 2011 after injection of 37% pore volume (PV) ASP solution. Coincident with the polymer drive injection into Phase 1, Phase 2 ASP solution injection began. Phase 2 polymer drive began in 2016 after injection of 55% PV ASP solution. Polymer solution injection for the polymer drives of both phases continues in both phases with Phase 1 and Phase 2 injected volumes being 55 and 42% PV as of August 2019, respectively. Phase 1 and Phase 2 oil cut response to ASP injection showed an increase of approximately four times from 3.2% to a peak of 13.0% for Phase 1 and Phase 2 oil cut increased from 1.8% to a peak of 14.8%, approximately eightfold. Oil rates increased from approximately 3200 m3/m (20 127 bbl/m) at the end of water injection to a peak of 8300 m3/m (52 220 bbl/m) in Phase 1 and from 1230 m3/m (7 736 bbl/m) to 6332 m3/m (39 827 bbl/m) in Phase 2. Phase 1 pattern analysis indicates that the PV of ASP solution injected varied from 13% to 54% PV of ASP. Oil recoveries after the start of ASP solution injection in the different patterns ranged from 2.3% original oil in place (OOIP) up to 21.3% OOIP with lower oil recoveries generally correlating with lower volumes of ASP solution injected. Wells in common to the two phases of the project show increased oil cut and oil rate responses to chemical injection from both Phases 1 and 2. Total oil recovery as of August 2019 is 60% OOIP for Phase 1 and 62% OOIP for Phase 2. Phase 1 economic analysis indicated chemical and operation cost was approximately CAD 26/bbl, resulting in the decision to move forward with Phase 2.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 542
Author(s):  
Abdeli D. ZHUMADILULI ◽  
Irina V. PANFILOV ◽  
Jamilyam A. ISMAILOVA

Most of oil companies today are focused on increasing the recovery factor from their oil fields. New drilling and well technologies as well as last advances in reservoir management, monitoring and Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods are thought to play a major role to meet the future demand of energy. Current decline in discovery of new oilfields intensified by a decline in oil prices make industrial companies to work on development of new efficient and economic techniques that will allow better production at lower cost. One such technology developed at Kazakh National Research University is presented in this paper. The latter propose the use of specific perforated holes on tubing liners in order to control the rate of water injection into variably permeable layers and to prevent non-uniform displacement of oil. The study was initially conducted on experimental facility that proved a positive correlation between the perforation density and water flow rates. Then the simulation test was performed using the data from several Kazakhstani oil fields. The results show an increase of sweep efficiency as well as a decrease in water-cut compared to traditional well case.


1975 ◽  
Vol 15 (04) ◽  
pp. 338-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.T. Szabo

Abstract Numerous polymer floods were performed in unconsolidated sand packs using a C14-tagged, cross-linked, partially hydrolyzed ployacrylamide, and the data are compared with brine-flood performance in the same sands. performance in the same sands. The amount of "polymer oil" was linearly proportional to polymer concentration up to a proportional to polymer concentration up to a limiting value. The upper limit of polymer concentration yielding additional polymer oil was considerably higher for a high-permeability sand than for a low-permeability sand. It is shown that a minimum polymer concentration exists, below which no appreciable polymer oil can be produced in high-permeability sands. The effect of polymer slug size on oil recovery is shown for various polymer concentrations, and the results from these tests are used to determine the optimum slug size and polymer concentration for different sands. The effect of salinity was studied by using brine and tap water during polymer floods under similar conditions. Decreased salinity resulted in improved oil recovery at low, polymer concentrations, but it had little effect at higher polymer concentrations. Polymer injection that was started at an advanced stage of brine flood also improved the oil recovery in single-layered sand packs. Experimental data are presented showing the effect of polymer concentration and salinity on polymer-flood performance in stratified reservoir polymer-flood performance in stratified reservoir models. Polymer concentrations in the produced water were measured by analyzing the radioactivity of effluent samples, and the amounts of retained polymer in the stratified models are given for each polymer in the stratified models are given for each experiment. Introduction In the early 1960's, a new technique using dilute polymer solutions to increase oil recovery was polymer solutions to increase oil recovery was introduced in secondary oil-recovery operations. Since then, this new technique has attained wide-spread commercial application. The success and the complexity of this new technology has induced many authors to investigate many aspects of this flooding technique. Laboratory and field studies, along with numerical simulation of polymer flooding, clearly demonstrated that polymer additives increase oil recovery. polymer additives increase oil recovery. Some of the laboratory results have shown that applying polymers in waterflooding reduces the residual oil saturation through an improvement in microscopic sweep efficiency. Other laboratory studies have shown that applying polymer solutions improves the sweep efficiency in polymer solutions improves the sweep efficiency in heterogeneous systems. Numerical simulation of polymer flooding, and a summary of 56 field applications, clearly showed that polymer injection initiated at an early stage of waterflooding is more efficient than when initiated at an advanced stage. Although much useful information has been presented, the experimental conditions were so presented, the experimental conditions were so variable that difficulties arose in correlating the numerical data. So, despite this good data, a systematic laboratory study of the factors influencing the performance of polymer flooding was still lacking in the literature. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of polymer concentration, polymer slug size, salinity in the polymer bank, initial water saturation, and permeability on the performance of polymer floods. The role of oil viscosity did not constitute a subject of this investigation. However, some of the data indicated that the applied polymer resulted in added recovery when displacing more viscous oil. The linear polymer-flood tests were coupled with tests in stratified systems, consisting of the same sand materials used in linear flood tests. Thus, it was possible to differentiate between the role of polymer in mobility control behind the flood front in each layer and its role in mobility control in the entire stratified system through improvement in vertical sweep efficiency. A radioactive, C14-tagged hydrolyzed polyacrylamide was used in all oil-recovery tests. polyacrylamide was used in all oil-recovery tests. SPEJ P. 338


2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (06) ◽  
pp. 664-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry L. Chang ◽  
Xingguang Sui ◽  
Long Xiao ◽  
Zhidong Guo ◽  
Yuming Yao ◽  
...  

Summary The first large-scale colloidal dispersion gel (CDG) pilot test was conducted in the largest oil field in China, Daqing oil field. The project was initiated in May 1999, and injection of chemical slugs was completed in May 2003. This paper provides detailed descriptions of the gel-system characterization, chemical-slug optimization, project execution, performance analysis, injection facility design, and economics. The improvements of permeability variation and sweep efficiency were demonstrated by lower water cut, higher oil rate, improved injection profiles, and the increase of the total dissolved solids (TDS) in production wells. The ultimate incremental oil recovery (defined as the amount of oil recovered above the projected waterflood recovery at 98% water cut) in the pilot area would be approximately 15% of the original oil in place (OOIP). The economic analysis showed that the chemical costs were approximately U.S. $2.72 per barrel of incremental oil recovered. Results are presented in 15 tables and 8 figures. Introduction Achieving mobility control by increasing the injection fluid viscosity and achieving profile modification by adjusting the permeability variation in depth are two main methods of improving the sweep efficiency in highly heterogeneous and moderate viscous-oil reservoirs. In recent years (Wang et al. 1995, 2000, 2002; Guo et al. 2000), the addition of high-molecular-weight (MW) water-soluble polymers to injection water to increase viscosity has been applied successfully in the field on commercial scales. Weak gels, such as CDGs, formed with low-concentration polymers and small amounts of crosslinkers such as the trivalent cations aluminum (Al3+) and chromium (Cr3+) also have been applied successfully for in-depth profile modification (Fielding et al. 1994; Smith 1995; Smith and Mack 1997). Typical behaviors of CDGs and testing methods are given in the literature (Smith 1989; Ranganathan et al. 1997; Rocha et al. 1989; Seright 1994). The giant Daqing oil field is located in the far northeast part of China. The majority of the reservoir belongs to a lacustrine sedimentary deposit with multiple intervals. The combination of heterogeneous sand layers [Dykstra-Parsons (1950) heterogeneity indices above 0.5], medium oil viscosities (9 to 11 cp), mild reservoir temperatures (~45°C), and low-salinity reservoir brines [5,000 to 7,000 parts per million (ppm)] makes it a good candidate for chemical enhanced-oil-recovery processes. Daqing has successfully implemented commercial-scale polymer flooding (PF) since the early 1990s (Chang et al. 2006). Because the PF process is designed primarily to improve the mobility ratio (Chang 1978), additional oil may be recovered by using weak gels to further improve the vertical sweep. Along with the successes of PF in the Daqing oil field, two undesirable results were also observed:high concentrations of polymer produced in production wells owing to the injection of large amounts of polymer (~1000 ppm and 50% pore volume) andthe fast decline in oil rates and increase in water cuts after polymer injection was terminated. In 1997, a joint laboratory study between the Daqing oil field and Tiorco Inc. was conducted to investigate the potential of using the CDG process, or the CDG process with PF, to further improve the recovery efficiency, lower the polymer production in producing wells, and prolong the flood life. The joint laboratory study was completed in 1998 with encouraging results (Smith et al. 2000). Additional laboratory studies to further characterize the CDG gellation process, optimize the formulation, and investigate the degradation mechanisms were conducted in the Daqing field laboratories before the pilot test. A simplistic model was used to optimize the slug designs and predict incremental oil recovery. Initial designs called for a 25% pore volume (Vp) CDG slug with 700 ppm polymer and the polymer-to-crosslinker ratio (P/X) of 20 in a single inverted five-spot patten. Predicted incremental recovery was approximately 9% of OOIP.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisha Zhao ◽  
Li Li ◽  
Zhongbao Wu ◽  
Chenshuo Zhang

An analytical model has been developed for quantitative evaluation of vertical sweep efficiency based on heterogeneous multilayer reservoirs. By applying the Buckley-Leverett displacement mechanism, a theoretical relationship is deduced to describe dynamic changes of the front of water injection, water saturation of producing well, and swept volume during waterflooding under the condition of constant pressure, which substitutes for the condition of constant rate in the traditional way. Then, this method of calculating sweep efficiency is applied from single layer to multilayers, which can be used to accurately calculate the sweep efficiency of heterogeneous reservoirs and evaluate the degree of waterflooding in multilayer reservoirs. In the case study, the water frontal position, water cut, volumetric sweep efficiency, and oil recovery are compared between commingled injection and zonal injection by applying the derived equations. The results are verified by numerical simulators, respectively. It is shown that zonal injection works better than commingled injection in respect of sweep efficiency and oil recovery and has a longer period of water free production.


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