Golden Miles in Oil Recovery
Authors: Mulyak V. V. , Chertenkov M. V. , Veremko N. A. 
Published: October 2016

Development of heterogeneous reservoirs is accompanied by fast increase of water-cut in producers caused by water break-trough by most permeable intervals and zones, and characterized by the poor sweep, production of large amounts of water and inefficient water injection.

Development of heterogeneous reservoirs requires special approach to technology application. One of the solutions is implementation of in-depth sweep improvement technologies.

Wide range of chemical reagents belonging to different classes of chemical compounds is used for well treatments. However, in general, polyacrylamide series synthetic organic polymers is used for conformance treatment, which possess a number of disadvantages, including short period of efficiency they are providing.

New technology is aimed to solve this problem. Proposed to use innovative reagent – inorganic polymer. This reagent is complex composition of titanium and aluminum compounds, consisting of hydroxides, chlorides and oxide hydrochlorides of titanium and aluminum.

Creation of hydrodynamic screens in high permeable and swept zones, is driven by mudding of channels by dispersed particles of titanium coagulant and coagulation products which are formed due to contact with formation and injected water. Gels formed by titanium coagulant belongs to inorganic polymers series and characterized, in comparison with the organic polymers, by stability over time and in high temperature environment.

A distinguishing ability of the technology is ability to amplify hydrodynamic screen over time, which leads to increased efficiency and duration of barrier, due to volume increase of coagulation products induced by contact with injected water. A pilot project in West Siberia is currently underway.

The world-wide commercial oil production has existed for over 150 years. These years have seen numerous scientific and engineering solutions implemented in oil fields, each having its own peculiar effect on oil industry development.

Among them, however one should single out the unique technologies which turned out to be a prominent events in the world of oil. In fact, these are the "golden miles" the oil industry has walked, each mile being a landmark and a step to the next technological breakthrough. We do not dare identifying each and every "golden mile". Still one could hardly object when some of them would stand for the first well in the world drilled by a rotary method with a steam engine in Pennsylvania, or the first flooding ever and the first centrifugal pump that found application in the early 1900s in the USA, the first electrical well logging made in France, or the first horizontal well drilled in Azerbaijan, the first reservoir hydrofracturing performed in Oklahoma and Texas, and the first multilateral well built in Bashkiria (the USSR) [1 – 6]. Among the recent outstanding achievements, it is worth mentioning multizone reservoir hydrofracturing technology developed in the USA for oil and gas shales and successfully adapted by Russia to regular low-permeability reservoirs.

The above list of the most significant engineering solutions in the oil industry may be even supplemented but the fact remains that most outstanding achievements were seen in the 20th century, and considering the complicated challenges set ahead the oil science by the current stage of oil industry development, the following question is becoming even more urgent: how will the today's generation of oil engineers will answer to arising challenges? what will the next "Golden mile" be?