Best Practices for Waterflooding Optimization Improve Oil Recovery in Mature Fields
Authors: Carpenter Chris 
Published: December 2018

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 186431, “Waterflooding Optimization: A Pragmatic and Cost-Effective Approach To Improve Oil Recovery From Mature Fields,” by X.G. Lu, SPE, and J. Xu, C&C Reservoirs, prepared for the 2017 SPE/IATMI Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, Bali, Indonesia, 17–19 October. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

Most mature sandstone reservoirs feature natural aquifer drive, artificial water drive, or a combination of the two. These mature fields generally are characterized by high water cut and high recovery efficiency. This paper presents technologies and best practices to improve oil recovery in mature fields through waterflooding optimization. These technologies have proved practical and cost-effective.

Introduction

Although chemical enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) technologies such as polymer flood and alkali/surfactant/polymer (ASP) flood can improve oil recovery by 10 and 20%, for waterflooded sandstone reservoirs, respectively, they are expensive and are not applicable in most mature fields at a low oil price. A major problem for waterflooded fields is that, with increased water/oil ratio (WOR), the cost of processing produced fluid soars to exceed the breakeven mark. As a result, many wells are forced to be shut in; in some instances, the entire field may be suspended.

Waterflooding-Optimization Methods

The technologies discussed in this section are effective generally for multilayer, heterogeneous sandstone reservoirs with high permeability contrast.

Zonal Water Injection. This is the most widely applied water-injection-optimization technology. In a multilayered reservoir, early water encroachment along thief zones often occurs. During the mature stage, when the field produces at high water cut, commingled water injection usually leads to ineffective water cycling from the injectors, flowing preferentially through the high-permeability thief zones and back to the surface from the producers.

Using the same injecting wellbore, zonal water injection can enhance water-injection rate arbitrarily in low-permeability, low-production, and low-water-cut production zones while reducing the water-injection rate of medium-high permeability, high-water-cut production zones. Thus, the application of this technology can achieve the goal of expanding sweeping efficiency in order to improve oil recovery.

Changing the Direction of Fluid Flow. The basic principle is to change the originally fixed injection/production-fluid-flow direction to sweep the remaining oil in bypassed high-oil-saturation areas. This goal is achieved through converting injectors into producers or vice versa. In practice, some injectors are shut in while others are left inactive or regular conversion between injectors and producers is conducted in order to change fluid-flow direction, achieving expanded sweep efficiency.

Water Shutoff To Improve Areal Sweeping Volume. This application addresses the challenge of lateral heterogeneities resulting from the permeability contrast of various facies sands. This technique seeks to change the original areal waterflooding direction to constrain ineffective water injection by shutting in the high-fluid-production, high-water-cut wells. The change in liquid-flow direction will benefit the injected water turning to the poorly swept region or bypassed remaining oil to expand sweep volume, achieving the goal of improved ultimate recovery.