Reservoir Simulation for the El Dorado Micellar-Polymer Project
Authors: Zetik Donald F. 
Published: December 2007

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.

This paper was prepared for the Improved Oil Recovery Symposium of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Tulsa, Okla., March 22–24, 1976. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

Cities Service Oil Company, in cooperation with the Energy Research and Development Administration, is conducting a field demonstration test of micellar-polymer flooding in the El Dorado Field of Butler County, Kansas. A series of simple numerical reservoir models was developed to help engineer this test.

This paper presents the techniques employed to design a field test of micellar-polymer recovery process. A minimum of information was initially available regarding the reservoir or the recovery process. The tools that we developed for this design allow us to incorporate pertinent data as they become available. Initial scarcity of data is likely to be common in feasibility studies and pilot test planning for micellar-polymer flooding. Thus, our experiences and techniques should be valuable to operators contemplating use of this improved recovery process.

Initial pattern selection work assumed a uniform thickness, homogeneous, isotropic reservoir and constant-rate wells. A superposition of line-source-solutions model was employed to calculate the relation between well rates and well pressures for a number of well patterns. Areal sweep efficiencies for these patterns. Areal sweep efficiencies for these patterns were evaluated using the streamlines patterns were evaluated using the streamlines and flood fronts calculated by a point-tracking model. The streamlines were used to divide flow into streamtubes so that a one-dimensional model of the recovery process could be used to predict the performance of the test pattern.

The initial work indicated low production rates which possibly could be overcome by raising reservoir pressures. Time-varying well rates were incorporated into the models in order to simulate operation with constant well pressures. Simulation with these models showed that reservoir pressure and productivity could be substantially increased with only a moderate amount of chemical loss due to migration outside the pattern.

Introduction

The El Dorado Micellar-Polymer Demonstration Project is a cooperative venture between Cities Project is a cooperative venture between Cities Service Oil Company and the United States Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). The purpose of this project is to run comparative field and laboratory tests on two different micellar-polymer recovery processes. The primary objectives of this project are to determine whether commercial tertiary oil can be recovered by these processes and to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each process.