Production Optimization in Waterfloods: A New Approach to Interwell-Connectivity Modeling
Authors: Carpenter Chris 
Published: November 2017

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 182450, “Production Optimization in Waterfloods With a New Approach to Interwell-Connectivity Modeling,” by Xiang Zhai, Tailai Wen, and Sebastien Matringe, Quantum Reservoir Impact, prepared for the 2016 SPE Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, Perth, Australia, 25–27 October. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

In the complete paper, the authors present a novel methodology to model interwell connectivity in mature waterfloods and achieve an improved reservoir-energy distribution and sweep pattern to maximize production performance by adjusting injection and production strategy on the well-control level. The method involves a reduced-physics-based fast numerical tracer test on each well, which yields interwell connection strength or well-allocation factors (WAFs), and then a data-driven efficiency model on each interwell connection calibrated automatically from the injection and production history of the reservoir.

Introduction

The approach combines and balances the advantages of both simulation and data-driven techniques. The approach models interwell connections based on a relatively mature waterflood history and performs fast forecast and waterflood optimization on the basis of the interwell-connection analysis. Injector/producer connections are identified by computing WAFs with a numerical tracer method. Then, a data-driven empirical efficiency model is adopted that de-fines the profile of the oil cut of each interwell connection, and reservoir-production history is used to calibrate the model. Therefore, each interwell connection is quantified with two critical parameters: WAF and connection efficiency. The reservoir model is simplified into a connection-based network model that can be used to predict oil and water production without use of rigorous time-dependent numerical simulation. A production-optimization algorithm is then implemented. The optimization objective is to minimize water production while maintaining oil-production rate, subject to a range of practical constraints. The production optimization is integrated into a numerical-simulation model, and a blind test is run for 6 months. A significant decrease in water production is observed.

Methodology

Waterflood Surveillance. WAF. In the process of waterflooding, water is injected into injectors to displace remaining oil. In this water/oil communication system, incompressibility is assumed in fluid dynamics and reservoir rock. This assumption is equivalent to assuming that pressure communication between any two points in the reservoir is essentially instantaneous. The WAF quantifies the strength of connection between two wells of different types.

WAF is often computed by tracing streamlines and counting the number of streamlines between wells. However, the streamline-based method is incompatible with a dual-porosity system, and in general has poor performance in unstructured grids. The authors adopt a stationary numerical tracer method to compute WAF. The equations used in this process are presented in the complete paper.