132

Int. J. Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2014

Production performance of water alternate gas

injection techniques for enhanced oil recovery:
effect of WAG ratio, number of WAG cycles and
the type of injection gas
Jigar Bhatia
School of Petroleum Technology,
Gandhinagar, 382007, India
E-mail: jigar_bhatia_123@yahoo.co.in

J.P. Srivastava
Institute of Reservoir Studies,
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation,
Ahmedabad, 380005, India
E-mail: jprakash325@gmail.com

Abhay Sharma
School of Petroleum Technology,
Gandhinagar, 382007, India
and
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology,
Hyderabad, Medak, 502205, India
E-mail: abhay@iith.ac.in

Jitendra S. Sangwai*
School of Petroleum Technology,
Gandhinagar, 382007, India
and
Department of Ocean Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT),
Madras, Chennai, 600036, India
Fax: +91-44-2257-4802
E-mail: jitendrasangwai@iitm.ac.in
*Corresponding author
Abstract: Production performance of a water alternate gas injection (WAG)
method has been reported for the effect of several operating parameters, such
as, WAG injection cycles, viz., single cycle WAG and five-cycle WAG and the
tapered WAG at the reservoir conditions of 120C and 230 kg/cm2 for
hydrocarbon gas and CO2 gas. It is observed that the number of cycles in the
WAG injection process affects the recovery of oil from the core sample. It is
Copyright 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

observed that the tapering in the WAG injection process improves the recovery
of oil initially in place. The observations on the effect of gases revealed that the
CO2 gas with five-cycle WAG process gives higher incremental recovery than
the five cycle WAG process using hydrocarbon gas. It is observed that the
saturation profile of CO2 WAG injection shows the better gas saturation in the
core as against the hydrocarbon gas in the WAG process. [Received: April 30,
2013; Accepted: October 7, 2013]
Keywords: enhanced oil recovery; EOR; water alternate gas; WAG; gas
trapping; incremental oil recovery; hydrocarbon pore volume; HCPV.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Bhatia, J., Srivastava, J.P.,
Sharma, A. and Sangwai, J.S. (2014) Production performance of water
alternate gas injection techniques for enhanced oil recovery: effect of WAG
ratio, number of WAG cycles and the type of injection gas, Int. J. Oil, Gas and
Coal Technology, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp.132151.
Biographical notes: Jigar Bhatia is currently working as an Instrumentation
Engineer at ICAM Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Surat. It is basically the recognised
system integrator for Rockwell Automation. He completed his BTech in
Instrumentation & Control Engineering from Nirma University, Ahmedabad in
2008 and MTech. in Petroleum Engineering from PanditDeendayal Petroleum
University, Gandhinagar, India in 2010.
J.P. Srivastava is currently working as Reservoir Engineer in National Oil
Company, ONGC at Mumbai, India. He worked in Institute of Reservoir
Studies, Ahmedabad from 20002011 dealing with laboratory investigation and
selection of gas-based EOR process to enhance recovery from mature fields of
ONGC. He has published over six papers in conferences of international
reputes. His research interest lies mainly in the field of gas-based EOR
techniques and reservoir characterisation through pressure transient analysis.
Abhay Sharma is currently working as Assistant Professor in the Department of
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology
Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India. He obtained his MTech and PhD in Mechanical
Engineering from IIT Roorkee in 2001 and 2008, respectively. His research
interest lies mainly in modelling and optimisation manufacturing processes.
Jitendra S. Sangwai is currently working as Assistant Professor in the
Petroleum Engineering Program, Department of Ocean Engineering at Indian
Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. He obtained MTech (2001)
and PhD (2007) in Chemical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur,
respectively. He worked with Schlumberger dealing with flow assurances
issues and on several commercial projects. He has published over 55 papers in
international journals and conferences of international repute. He holds seven
patents. His research interest lies mainly in the field of gas hydrates, enhanced
oil recovery and flow assurance.
This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled Investigations
on gas trapping phenomena for different EOR-water alternate gas injection
methodologies presented at International Petroleum Technology Conference
2012, IPTC 2012, Bangkok, Thailand, 79 February 2012.

133

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J. Bhatia et al.

Introduction

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods, also referred to as tertiary oil recovery methods,
are employed when primary and secondary recovery methods do not improve the
production from brownfields. It is a well-known fact that the world average of oil
recovery factor is estimated to be 35% (Tayfun, 2007) thus almost more than 60% of the
oil initially in place (OIIP) remains in the reservoir after the primary and the secondary
recovery. There is, therefore, an enormous incentive for development of a field through
EOR methods aimed at recovering some portion of the remaining oil keeping in view of
increasing oil prices and the energy demand worldwide. There have been several kinds of
EOR methods that can be used and are shown in Figure 1, such, as, polymer-flooding,
alkaline-surfactant-polymer flooding, gas-injection, thermal techniques, such as, in-situ
combustion, steam injection, etc. The applicability of several of these techniques to a
given field depends on various factors. Out of these, gas-injection-based EOR methods
are one of the most preferred methods for low to medium API oil brownfields due to their
simplicity and economic advantages. One of the derivative methods of gas-injection
techniques is the water alternate gas (WAG) injection methods, wherein water and gas
are injected intermittently. Oil recovery by the WAG injection has been attributed to
contact of upswept zones, especially recovery of attic or cellar oil by exploiting
segregation of gas to the top or accumulation of water toward the bottom. The WAG
injection techniques has the potential for increased microscopic displacement efficiency
because the residual oil after gas flooding is normally lower than the residual oil after
water flooding, and three-phase zones thus obtained lowers the remaining oil saturation.
Thus, the WAG injection can lead to improved oil recovery by combining better mobility
control and contacting upswept zones, and by leading to improved microscopic
displacement.
Figure 1

Different methods of EOR

EOR METHODS

CHEMICAL
Polymer flooding
Alkaline flooding
Surfactant flooding

GAS INJECTION
Miscible gas injection
Immiscible gas injection

THERMAL
Stream flooding
In-situ combustion
Hot water

BIOLOGICAL
Microbial enhance oil
recovery

Source: Green and Willhite (2003)

1.1 Gas-injection method

Gas-injection-based EOR methods are one of the most frequently used methods for EOR
(Kulkarni and Rao, 2005). In this method hydrocarbon or inert gas is injected in to the
reservoir containing residual oil. The components of the gas get dissolved with the lighter
components of the oil which helps to reduce the viscosity and increase the sweep
efficiency in the presence of a chasing fluid such as water. The component exchange
processes between the injected gas and reservoir oil causes heavy and light compositions
in the reservoir which separately moves towards the production side. Different gases are
used in the gas-injection methods, such as, nitrogen, hydrocarbon gas (HC), flue gas and

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

135

CO2 gas. Some of the injectants such as, CO2, help to increase oil production by means of
oil viscosity reduction, oil swelling and solution gas drive (Green and Willhite, 2003).
The use of specific gas depends on the availability of gas at the field. Previously liquefied
petroleum gas (LPG) and hydrocarbon gas were used for injection. But gradually as price
of natural gas increases, their priority got reduced. Gas-injection method can broadly be
classified as immiscible and miscible gas-injection, depending upon their miscibility with
the oil at reservoir condition. In immiscible gas-injection process the gas is injected at
lower pressure into the reservoir. It is further classified as dispersed gas-injection and
crestal gas-injection according to the injection region. In dispersed gas-injection, gas is
directly injected in to the oil bearing zone of the reservoir. This method is used in the thin
production zone. In crestal gas-injection method, gas is injected in to the gas cap above
the oil bearing zone. For this process, vertical permeability of the reservoir should be
high in order to push the oil towards the production end. Miscible gas-injection method
can be broadly classified as high pressure dry gas miscible displacement, enriched gas
miscible displacement and miscible slug flooding.
A large change in the mobility of gas and oil is observed in case of the gas-injection
methods due to difference in the viscosity of gas to the oil and water at the reservoir
conditions. This results in early breakthrough of the gas to the production side due to its
high sweep velocity. In order to control the sweep velocity of the gas, water and gas are
injected intermittently. This method is called as WAG injection method. Oil recovery by
WAG injection is due to the segregation of gas to the top and accumulation water at the
bottom resulting in the recovery of attic or cellar oil. As the residual oil after gas flooding
is typically lower than that of the water flooding, in addition to the formation of
three-phase zones, which may result in lowering the remaining oil saturation, therefore,
WAG injection shows the potential for increased microscopic displacement efficiency.
Thus, WAG injection can lead to improved oil recovery by combining better mobility
control and contacting upswept zones, and by leading to improved microscopic
displacement. Some factors such as wettability, interfacial tension, connate/fossil water
saturation and gravity segregation increases the complexity to the design of a successful
WAG flood. The WAG injection methods can be classified as miscible WAG, immiscible
WAG, hybrid WAG and simultaneous water alternate gas (SWAG) methods (Christensen
et al., 2001). Several screening criterion are to be considered before the application of
WAG technique for any particular field operation. These are mainly, reservoir pay
thickness, vertical permeability of the reservoir, availability of the gas, type of formation,
mobility ratio, etc.
The aim of the current work is to evaluate the performance of the different
gas-injection methodologies for a given brownfield in India. It includes comparative
studies on different WAG injection methods and to verify their effects on the production
enhancement from the given field. Core flooding experiments are performed at close to
the reservoir conditions of the pressure and temperature to identify:
a

the effect of WAG injection method for various WAG cycles

the recovery efficiency for different methods using different gases like hydrocarbon
gas and CO2 gas at reservoir condition

the effect of tapering on the WAG performance.

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J. Bhatia et al.

WAG processes which have been studied and discussed in this work (on the basis of
WAG cycles) are,
1

single cycle WAG using HC gas

five cycles WAG using HC gas

tapered WAG (with increasing and decreasing WAG ratio) using HC gas

five cycles WAG using CO2 gas.

The following Section 2 provides the experimental details of the present investigation
followed by the outcomes of the experimental work and discussion thereon.

Experimental details

The experiments were performed using the in-situ core sample obtained from the
reservoir and fitted in the core pack, which was then kept horizontally during all the
experiments. The gas and oil samples were collected from the separator and recombined
in the laboratory with given gas-oil ratio (GOR) so as to become representative of the
in-situ reservoir fluid. The recombination process is discussed in detail elsewhere
(Bhatia, 2010). The experiments were performed using the recombined separator fluid as
a reservoir fluid in the core sample and the hydrocarbon or CO2 gas with water as a mean
for injection in the core sample during WAG process. The water was injected at 20 cc/hr
and gas was injected at 10 cc/hr, which remained same for all the experiments as
mentioned above. The basis to choose these injection rates for water and gas are
purely based on our experience of several laboratory studies done in-house to mimic the
scaled-up water and gas injection rate that are possible in real field applications. The
water and gas ratio remained same except for the experiments where the effect of
tapering was studied. The details on the ratio of water and gas used are described later in
experimental procedure Section 2.3.

2.1 Properties of the experimental fluids and the reservoir

The composition of the hydrocarbon gas used for injection is given in Table 1, which was
obtained by using gas chromatographic technique. The major component of the injection
gas was methane (about 90%) of the total concentration. The gas contains around 2%
CO2. The gas gravity was observed to be 0.8351 gm/cc. Another gas used for the WAG
process was pure CO2. The basic reservoir data and rock properties are given in Table 2.
The given reservoir is a sandstone reservoir and is under depletion. API gravity of the oil
was about 42 which indicates the light oil reservoir.

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

Table 1

Composition of the injected gas in mole fraction obtained by gas chromatography

Component

Mole fraction

N2

0.00000

CO2

0.02400

C1

0.90739

C2

0.05237

C3

0.01310

i-C4

0.00089

n-C4

0.00094

i-C5

0.00040

n-C5

0.00048

C6

0.00020

C7

0.00014

C8

0.00005

C9

0.00001

C10

0.00000

Total

1.00000

Table 2

137

Basic data for the reservoir and the core sample experiments
Details on the reservoir and the core sample

Sr. no.

Parameters

Reservoir rock type

Sandstone
2

Initial reservoir pressure (kg/cm )

Current reservoir pressure (kg/cm2)

2

292.7
230

Bubble point pressure (kg/cm )

Reservoir temperature (C)

Density of oil (gm/cc) at 128C

0.5142

Stock tank oil density at 15.5C

0.8161

269.6
128

API gravity of oil

41.5

Oil FVF (v/v)

1.84

10

Specific gravity of gas

11

Solution GOR (v/v)

0.8364
222

12

Core length (cm)

20

13

Core diameter (cm)

3.8

15

Avg. permeability (mD)

323.23

2.2 Experimental set-up

High pressure apparatus was selected for the core flooding experiments. All the flooding
experiments were performed at the reservoir pressure of 230 Kg/cm2 and temperature of

138

J. Bhatia et al.

128C. The schematic of the core flooding experiment is shown in Figure 2. The heart of
the set-up is the core pack which holds the actual core sample at reservoir conditions. The
core pack is placed in the oven which is maintained at reservoir temperature. Pressure
gauges are used to indicate the pressures at inlet and outlet of the core pack. The pressure
in the core pack is maintained at reservoir conditions by using positive displacement
pump (Ruska) which injects the fluid (gas, oil, water) at different flow rates in the core
pack. The inlet pressure is regulated by same positive displacement pump through which
kerosene has been used as a displacing fluid to displace any gas or liquid from the gas
cell/buffer cell/rocking cell into the core pack. The gas cell contains gas (HC or CO2) to
be injected during the WAG process. The buffer cell contains water (2% KCl) which is
used as a buffer to displace oil or water. The rocking cell is used to prepare the live oil
(recombined fluid) from the oil and gas samples collected from the separator. A
backpressure regulator regulates the flow from the core outlet by maintaining constant
pressure difference at the input and the output side. The produced fluid (water, gas and
oil) collected in the separator flask at the outlet of the core pack indicates the quantity of
the produced fluid and one end of the flask connected to the gas meter indicates the
quantity of the produced gas during the WAG process. Steel pipe of 1/8" diameter is used
for fluid transportation within the experimental set-up. The experimental setup described
here was same for all the experiments carried in this work. As the current experiment
set-up consist of a horizontal core flood reactor having a core diameter of about 3.8 cm,
which is sufficiently small, we assume that the flow of the fluid in the core sample is
predominantly unidirectional. In the current set-up, the control over vertical sweep may
not possible due to the small core diameter. This may need better set-up which can
quantify and control the vertical sweep of the injected fluid (Hadia et al., 2007). Before
carrying our actual experiments on the WAG process, initial preparation is done on the
recombination of reservoir fluids using the separator sample of the oil and gas and the
determination of GOR and formation volume factor (FVF) of the recombined reservoir
fluid. The GOR and FVF of recombined fluid are then matched within the accepted limit
with the reservoir GOR and FVF in order to check the reliability of the recombination
process.
Figure 2

Schematic diagram of the experimental set-up used for displacement studies (see online
version for colours)
High pressure experiments
Back

Pressure

Regulator
Hot Air Oven
PumpPump-I
Porous medium

Gas volume
measurement

PumpPump-II

Gasometer
Liquid (oil and brine)
brine)
volume measurement

Gas
Cell

Water
Cell

Buffer
Cell

Rocking Cell

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

139

2.3 Experimental procedure

The experimental procedure for all the WAG cases studied mainly consists of the
preparation of the core pack, cleaning and drying of the core pack, evacuation of the core
pack, determination of the pore volume (PV) with saturation of the brine solution,
determination of the hydrocarbon pore volume (HCPV) by displacing the brine solution
with heavy and light paraffin oil. The obtained value of the PV ( 60 cc) and HCPV gives
the connate/fossil water saturation inside the core. The core pack is then cleaned using
kerosene for studies with recombined fluid. Subsequently, the cleaned core pack is then
saturated with the recombined oil prepared in the laboratory. This is followed by the
secondary water flood until oil saturation in the core reaches to the residual oil saturation.
After completion of the water flooding, to produce the residual oil from the core, WAG
injection is started. The overall process resembles to the actual recovery process a
reservoir may undergo during its production phase. The details on other experimental
procedures related to core pack preparation and cleaning, absolute permeability
determination, PV and HCPV determination, oil saturation and water flooding procedure
can be found elsewhere (Bhatia, 2010) and not discussed here. In the subsequent
Section 2.3.1, a brief discussion on the process of tertiary gas-injection of WAG method
is presented.

2.3.1 Tertiary gas-injection

The tertiary gas-injection is carried out mainly by WAG process using hydrocarbon gas
and CO2 gas. Different WAG methods applied for EOR were single cycle WAG, five
cycle WAG (with HC gas and CO2 separately), and tapered WAG (with increasing
and decreasing WAG ratio). For single cycle WAG and five cycle WAG total 1 PV
(1 PV = 60 cc with 0.5 cc) of gas and water was injected intermittently with the WAG
ratio of 1:1 at the end of water flooding experiment. For tapered WAG injection method a
total of 1.5 PV gas and water was injected intermittently at the end of water flooding
experiment. In tapered WAG (with increasing and decreasing WAG ratio) WAG ratios,
as given in Table 3,were selected and used for the experimental study.
Table 3
Cycles

Injection WAG ratio for different cycle of tapered WAG methods

WAG ratio for tapered WAG (water :gas)
Increasing WAG ratio

Decreasing WAG ratio

3:5

3:1

3:4

3:2

1:1

1:1

3:2

3:4

3:1

3:5

Total of five experiments, namely, single cycle WAG (with hydrocarbon gas), five cycle
WAG (with hydrocarbon gas), five cycle WAG (with CO2 gas), and tapered WAG using
HC gas (with decreasing and increasing gas tapering) were investigated. In core-flooding
experiments, total PV (about 60 cc) of the core was divided according to the number of
cycles. In a single cycle WAG process, PV (about 60 cc) was divided as 0.5 PV (about
30 cc) gas and 0.5 PV (about 30 cc) water and were injected accordingly. Similarly, for

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J. Bhatia et al.

five cycles WAG process, 0.1 PV of gas and 0.1 PV of water were injected in five cycles
sequentially so as to make total injection equal to 1 PV (about 60 cc). Attanucci et al.
(1993) observed that in case of tapered WAG process an injection of total 1.5 PV gives
better results. In the present study, the experiments for tapering WAG were carried using
1.5 PV of gas and water as total injections. In case of tapered WAG (with decreasing
WAG ratio) more amount of gas was injected in the first cycle and was gradually
decreased in the subsequent cycles. Amount of water to be injected during each cycle
remained constant. In case of tapered WAG (with increasing WAG ratio) similar
procedure was followed but in reverse direction. The details on the quantity of gas and
water used for each of the above processes are given in the Table 4.
Table 4
Type of
process/
number
of cycles

Details on the amount of water and HC gas used for tapered WAG process
Tapered WAG
(increasing WAG ratio)
Amount
of (cc)

Tapered WAG
(decreasing WAG ratio)
Amount
of (cc)

Water

Gas

Fraction
of total PV
per cycle

WAG ratio
for each
cycle

Gas

15

0.40

3:5

0.20

3:1

12

0.35

3:4

0.25

3:2

0.30

1:1

0.30

1:1

0.25

3:2

12

0.35

3:4

Water

Fraction of
total PV
per cycle

WAG ratio
for each
cycle

0.20

3:1

15

0.40

3:5

Total

45

45

1.5

---

45

45

1.5

---

The hydrocarbon gas collected from the adjacent field and pure CO2 obtained from other
sources were used as injection gas. The pressure and temperature conditions of the core
pack were kept at reservoir condition and the injection rate for water was maintained at
20 cc/hr and for gas was maintained at 10 cc/hr to avoid the early breakthrough of the
gas. The brine, oil and the gas volumes produced at the end of the experiment were
measured from the separator (flask) and gas meter readings and tabulated as a function of
time. Material balance procedure was used to calculate the saturations of oil, gas and
water components.

2.3.2 Chasing water post WAG process

The chasing water was injected to get the additional recovery of HCPV after the WAG
injection process. Chase water helps to push the trapped gas and water in the core pack,
with that combined oil also gets produced at the production side. In this experimental
study maximum of 0.5 PV (around 30 cc) chasing water was injected after the completion
of the WAG injection process. The results tabulated during process are discussed in the
following Section 3.

Results and discussion

The core-flooding experiments are carried out to verify the effect of different parameters
of the WAG injection methods. The main objectives of this work are to study the

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

141

efficiency of different WAG processes and the parameters affecting the production
enhancement, viz., tapering of gas, WAG cycles, and type of the injected gas. The results
are discussed in the subsequent section with respect to the incremental oil recovery over
water flooding.

3.1 Oil recovery

The oil recovery from the above experimental data can be expressed as the displacement
efficiency or recovery in percentage of the total HCPV and can be calculated as,
Displacement efficiency (%HCPV) =

HCPV ( Q0 FVF ) VL
100
HCPV

(1)

where Q0 is the flow rate of oil and VL is the total line volume. VL is actually a kind of
dead volume of oil remained in the production tubing of the core flood apparatus and
which need not to be accounted as oil recovered. The results on the displacement
efficiency (in % of total HCPV) with respect to the total PV of fluid (water/gas-water)
injected for different WAG processes are shown in Figures 3 to 7. It is to be noted that
for all the experiments, a water flooding is carried out prior to each WAG process to
represent the secondary oil recovery using water flooding. The water flooding process
required a total of about 1.251.5 PV of the water to be injected in the core sample
(refer to Table 5). Percentage of recovery obtained using the water flooding prior to
WAG process is also given in Table 5 and observed to be in the range of 47 to 57%.
Actual WAG process starts after the end of the water flooding. The WAG processes
consume the fluids (gas and water) in different ranges of PV and have been shown in
Table 4 and are cumulative on the x-axis of Figures 3 to 7 after the pre-water flooding
section. Recoveries in percentage of HCPV have been shown for each of these processes
in Figures 3 to 7. At the conclusion of each WAG process, chasing water is flown
through the core pack to see any incremental recovery. The recovery obtained for
different phases of each process visible in Figures 3 to 7 are tabulated in Table 5.
The maximum recovery is noticed in CO2 five cycle injections (about 97.86% of
HCPV), and next maximum recovery is in tapered WAG injection (decreasing WAG
ratio) (about 72.48% of HCPV). The maximum incremental recovery over the water
flood is seen with CO2 gas with five cycle WAG injection (about 40.2% of HCPV), and
the next is noticed with tapered WAG HC gas-injection with increasing WAG ratio
(about 23.92% of HCPV). The maximum recovery with CO2 is obtained probably due to
its better miscibility with the crude oil (in the core pack) at reservoir conditions as
compared with the HC gas used in WAG processes. Better recovery is obtained in case of
tapered WAG injection (decreasing WAG ratio) as against all WAG processes using HC
gas is due to an increased sweep efficiency governed by an initial dissolution of
maximum amount of gas with the crude oil in the first cycle, thus helping better mobility
in the pore of the core sample. This results in an increased relative permeability of oil in
the core sample which is enhanced by the subsequent water cycle in the WAG process.
The recovery is affected by different parameters like WAG cycles, type of the injected
gas, tapering, etc. The effects of these parameters are discussed in the following
Section 3.2.

142

Summary of results for WAG injection methods

Chasing water injected after
WAG process (PV)

Total PV injected including

for WAG process

Recovery with
water flooding

Incremental recovery
over water flood

Total recovery

Incremental recovery
during chase water

Single cycle WAG

HC gas

1.246

0.25

2.378

51.57

12.75

64.32

30

Five cycle WAG

HC gas

1.028

0.5

2.478

52.05

19.30

71.30

2.1

30.06

Tapered WAG
(increasing
WAG ratio)

HC gas

1.255

0.35

3.127

48.44

23.92

72.36

29.9

Tapered WAG
(decreasing
WAG ratio)

HC gas

1.232

0.33

3.063

51.33

16.91

72.48

4.23

16

Five cycle WAG

CO2 gas 1.452

0.28

2.723

57.67

40.2

97.86

29

WAG injection
pattern

Residual oil saturation

(%HCPV)

Amount of Water injected

pre-WAG process (PV)

Recovery (%HCPV)

Type of injection gas

Table 5

J. Bhatia et al.

3.2 Effects of various operating parameters

3.2.1 Number of WAG cycle
Zhang et al. (2010) observed that by increasing the number of the WAG cycles in
gas-injection methods helps to get more recovery of the oil from the reservoir. The
effects of WAG cycle are also studied in this work to see the applicability for the given
reservoir. The results obtained are shown in Figures 3 and 4 for single cycle WAG and
five cycle WAG process using HC gas. The single cycle WAG process using HC gas
shows 12.74% incremental recovery (recovery obtained after the initial water flooding)
and five cycle WAG process using HC gas (no tapering) shows about 17.16% of HCPV
incremental recovery over the water flooding. This indicates that the number of cycle
affects the recovery of HCPV. Increment in the number of WAG cycle improves the
recovery for the same amount of gas utilisation. However, in some of the studies it is
observed that the recovery does not improve significantly even increasing the number of
WAG cycles, probably due to increased water saturation and reduced discontinuity of the
oil phase (Dong et al., 2005).

3.2.2 Effect of tapering

The increase or decrease in the water to gas ratio during the WAG cycles is known as
tapering phenomena in the WAG process. It is also known as the hybrid WAG method
(Christensen et al., 2001). In the tapered WAG process, gas-injection after the initial

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

143

water flood pushes the oil to the production well in case the oil saturation is high, and if it
is low then it will displace the oil to the higher water saturated channels and some of
the gas stays in the small channels and resist the water mobility (Dong et al.,
2005). Increasing the tapering form a WAG ratio (water: gas) of 1:1 to 1:2 to 1:3
followed by chase water increases the efficiency of the oil recovery (Attanucci et al.,
1993). Results due to the present experimental study on tapering with both increasing
and decreasing WAG are shown in Figures 5 and 6. It is evident that increasing
WAG ratio shows more recovery than decreasing WAG ratio during each cycle. The
large quantity of gas injected during the first cycle (refer to Table 5) helps to get
connected with more residual oil and makes it move towards the high permeable area.
Subsequently, the water cycle flowing through this highly permeable area (channels)
helps to push the oil-gas system towards the production well. The experimental results
for tapered WAG with increasing WAG ratio show that there is no further oil
production after three cycles of WAG injection, which indicate that tapered WAG
injection method can be efficiently used for lower WAG cycles for the equivalent oil
recovery. It is also observed that the chase water also plays an important role during
tapering of gas. The oil recovery obtained in case of tapered WAG with decreasing WAG
ratio is about 68.25% of the HCPV before the chase water flooding. An additional
recovery of 4.2% is achieved after the chase water flooding at the end of WAG process
resulting in a total 72.48% recovery from the given experiment. The chasing water is a
concluding process and acts similar to water cycles in a WAG process only except that
sufficient quantity of water is injected in the core in order to get the maximum possible
recovery from the reservoir. The current study may not be sufficient enough to deduce on
the optimum WAG ratio required for field application. This may depend upon the
reservoir fluid and rock properties, in addition to the type of gas injection being used. In
addition, economics may play a vital role in deciding an optimum value for the WAG
ratio. WAG process may help to reduce the viscous fingering effect associated with
sample gas injection techniques, thanks to the better mobility ratio provided by the
alternate water injection. However, these phenomena may depend on the reservoir fluid
properties, such as, viscosity and density, which may have significant impact on the
optimum WAG ratio.

3.2.3 Effect of injecting gas

The results for five cycle WAG using HC gas and CO2 gas are shown in Figures 4 and 7,
respectively, and tabulated in Table 5. The results show that CO2 injection in five cycles
WAG gives recovery of about 97.86% of HCPV, which is very high compared to the
recovery of five cycle injection of hydrocarbon gas (about 71.3% of HCPV). This is due
to the fact that compared to the hydrocarbon gas CO2 gas is having better miscibility with
the crude oil at the reservoir condition that helps in increasing the solution GOR of the oil
and also helps in reducing viscosity of the oil. This probably results in the solution gas
driven production and increasing the relative permeability of the oil phase. The reservoir
condition of pressure and temperature of 230 kg/cm2 and 120C shows that the CO2 gas
may be at near supercritical state at the reservoir condition resulting in better miscibility
with the reservoir fluid.

144

J. Bhatia et al.

Figure 3

Displacement efficiency vs. PV injected for single cycle WAG injection using HC gas
as injectant (see online version for colours)

90

Displacement Efficiency (%HCPV)

GAS INJECTION WATER

WATER FLOODING

80

CHASEWATER

70
60
50
40
WAGCYCLE

30
20
10
0
0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

Pore volume injected (cc)

Figure 4

Displacement efficiency vs. PV injected for five cycle WAG injection using HC gas as
injectant (see online version for colours)

GAS

GAS

WATER

GAS

WATER

GAS

WATER

GAS

WATERFLOODING

WATER

80

WATER

Displacement Efficiency (%HCPV)

90
CHASEWATER

70
60
50
40
30

WAG
CYCLE

20
10
0
0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

Pore volume injected (cc)

2.0

2.5

3.0

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

GAS

WATER

GAS

WATER

GAS

WATER

WATER
FLOODING

80

WATER

GAS

Displacement Efficiency (%HCPV)

90

WATER

Displacement efficiency vs. PV injected for tapered WAG injection (with increasing
WAG ratio) using HC gas as injectant (see online version for colours)

GAS

Figure 5

145

CHASE
WATER

70
60
50
40
WAG
CYCLE

30
20
10
0
0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

Pore volume injected (cc)

Displacement Efficiency (% HCPV)

70

GAS

GAS

WATER

GAS

WATER

WATERFLOODING

GAS

80

GAS
WATER

90

WATER

Displacement efficiency vs. PV injected for five cycle WAG injection (with decreasing
WAG ratio) using HC gas as injectant (see online version for colours)
WATER

Figure 6

CHASEWATER

60
50
40

WAG
Cycle

30
20
10
0
0.0

0.5

1.0
1.5
2.0
Pore volume injected (cc)

2.5

3.0

3.5

146

J. Bhatia et al.
Displacement efficiency vs. PV injected for five cycle WAG injection using CO2 gas as
injectant (see online version for colours)

Figure 7

WATER

GAS

WATER

WATER

GAS

GAS

Water

80

GAS

WATER
FLOODING

GAS

Displacement Efficiency (%HCPV)

90

WATER

100
CHASE WATER

70
60
50
40
WAG
CYCLE

30
20
10
0
0

0.5

1.5

2.5

Pore volume injected (cc)

The recovery of the oil from the reservoir is a strong function of saturation of different
phases present in the core (Dong et al., 2005). Trapping is also an important parameter
that affects the recovery of oil (Ghomian et al., 2008). Trapped gas refers to the immobile
gas saturation remaining after the rock is flooded with oil or water. Lands (1968) model
gives a relationship between final and initial gas saturation. It was found that a general
relationship between initial gas saturation and trapped gas saturation as give below in
equation (2).
C=

1
1

S gt S gi

(2)

where Sgt = final gas saturation, Sgi = initial gas saturation, and C is the Lands trapping
constant of the rock. Value of C reflects the final gas saturation in the reservoir after the
WAG injection process. A small value of C shows higher final hydrocarbon gas (from
WAG process) saturation in the core. This shows that the hydrocarbon gas has been
trapped in the core by efficiently displacing the crude oil from the core, thus, increasing
recovery of the oil from the core. Trapped gas creates significant hysteresis effects
(during drainage and imbibition) and reduces the relative permeability of the water,
especially, in the mixed-wet and oil-wet reservoirs (Rogers and Grigg, 2000). The results
of saturation of phases and Lands trapping constant for the experiments have been
calculated for all the WAG cases studied. The results on saturation of different phases are
shown in Figures 8 and 9 and Table 6. The numerical values on the saturation of fluids in
different WAG processes along with their corresponding Lands parameters are shown in
Table 6. It is observed from the saturation profiles for each of the WAG processes that

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

147

the gas saturation is increased quite significantly in almost all of the WAG processes.
This is in accordance with the low value of the Lands parameter. The saturation profile
of CO2 WAG injection shows the better gas saturation in the core as against the use of
hydrocarbon gas. The single cycle WAG process is observed to be less efficient as
compared to tapered WAG. The tapered WAG with increasing WAG ratio is observed to
be efficient in enhancing recovery as compared to that of tapering WAG with decreasing
WAG ratio as evident from the Lands parameter. Five cycles WAG with hydrocarbon
gas shows the higher gas trapping next to the WAG process with CO2 (five cycles). Other
parameter studied in these experiments is gas utilising factor which indicated as the
required quantity of gas required to produce 1 bbl of oil and are given in Table 7. This
factor is calculated as in below equation (3),
Gas utilising factor =

volume of oil produced

quantity of gas injected during process

(3)

The result shows that the CO2 gas gives the maximum oil recovery with minimum
quantity of gas-injection. Miscibility of gas can be considered as one of the factors for
this incremental recovery.
Figure 8

Saturation of phases during single cycle WAG injection (see online version for colours)

Notes: WF: water flooding, G1: gas-injection, W1: water injection (WAG process),
Sw,g,o = saturation of water, gas and oil.

The macroscopic displacement efficiency due to water was observed to be highest in case
of tapered WAG and CO2 WAG injection, which is in the range of 41 to 44% against 21
to 24% due to the gas. A five cycle WAG process was observed to be the lowest
displacement efficiency due to water which is about 14%. However, the five cycle WAG
has highest displacement efficiency due to gas, which is about 42% followed by the CO2
WAG injection (38%). In addition, in the present study, all the experiments were carried
out with the same experimental set-up and for favourable mobility ratio. The approximate
estimate of areal sweep efficiency was found to be in the range of 70 to 80% for most of
the experimental conditions. The single cycle WAG was found to have lowest areal seep

148

J. Bhatia et al.

efficiency of 70%, while those with five cycle WAG was found to have areal sweep
efficiency of about 80%. The five cycle CO2 WAG was observed to have highest areal
sweep efficiency of 90%. It is to be noted here that, as the core sample used in this study
are relatively small and homogeneous, the vertical sweep may be completely absent. This
may result in decrease of overall efficiency of the process at reservoir scale. We expect
the reduction in the efficiency may be of the order of 20 to 30% of the measured
efficiency at the laboratory scale, which may largely depend upon the local reservoir
conditions and may vary from field to field. The general conclusion from this study is
that the CO2-WAG gives better relative displacement efficiency as compared to other
processes studied in this work.
Figure 9

Saturation of phases during (a) five cycle WAG injection, (b) tapered WAG injection
(increasing WAG ratio), (c) tapered WAG injection (decreasing WAG ratio) and
(d) five cycle CO2 WAG injection (see online version for colours)

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Notes: WF: water flooding, G: gas-injection, W: water injection (WAG process);

Sw,g,o = saturation of water, gas and oil.

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

Table 6

149

Summary of saturation profile results and Lands trapping constant

Saturation (%PV)

WAG injection
pattern

Lands gas
trapping
constant C

Injecting gas

Initial

Single cycle
WAG

Hydrocarbon gas

28.43 0.00 71.57

50.46 24.00 25.54

1.39

Five cycle
WAG

Hydrocarbon gas

29.32 0.00 70.68

37.61

42.1

20.25

1.80

Carbon dioxide gas 28.33 0.00 71.66

60.8

37.7

1.53

1.6

Sw

Five cycle
WAG

Sg

Final
So

Sw

Sg

So

Tapered WAG
(increasing
WAG ratio)

Hydrocarbon gas

28.78 0.00 71.21

59.11 21.21 19.68

2.7

Tapered WAG
(decreasing
WAG ratio)

Hydrocarbon gas

27.5

56.22 23.83 19.95

2.2

Table 7

0.00

72.5

Gas utilisation factor for different WAG cycle

Type of the
injection gas

Volume of gas
injected during
WAG process (cc)

Gas utilisation factor

Single cycle WAG

HC gas

30

2.353261

Five cycle WAG

HC gas

30

1.748252

Five cycle WAG

CO2

30

0.746269

Tapered WAG
(increasing
WAG ratio)

HC gas

45

1.881271

Tapered WAG
(decreasing
WAG ratio)

HC gas

45

2.659647

WAG injection
pattern

Conclusions

The implementation of any EOR process should intend experimental verification of

process parameters and cost effectiveness of the process. The experimental study,
followed by simulation and a pilot project implementation provides the better estimation
of the process parameters at the field scale. This study consists of comparative study of
different WAG injection process for the core sample collected from the brown field and
the live oil prepared in the laboratory, from sample of oil and gas collected from the field
separator. The experimental work is done at the reservoir temperature at 120C and
pressure at 230 kg/cm2. The single cycle WAG (with HC gas), five cycle WAG (with HC
gas and CO2 gas) and tapered WAG using HC gas (with increasing/decreasing WAG
ratio) have been investigated experimentally. Based on the experimental results some
important conclusions are derived for implementation of WAG process.

150

J. Bhatia et al.

The main conclusions from this study are given below,

The WAG injection process gives the better sweep control, mobility control of
water and gas phases, and improves the total recovery of HCPV. Therefore almost all
the gas-injection methods now converted to the WAG injection methods.

The numbers of cycles in the WAG injection process affect the recovery of oil from
the reservoir. The results show that for the same volume of injecting fluid in single
cycle and five cycle process the incremental recovery of HCPV has been noticed as
12.74% and 17.16%, respectively.

The tapering during the WAG injection process helps to improve the recovery of the
HCPV. Increasing WAG ratio during the process gives better incremental recovery
than decreasing WAG ratio.

The tapered WAG process with decreasing WAG ratio does not show recovery after
three cycles of WAG process. This limits use of more cycles of WAG process as
they are not economically feasible.

The trapping of the gas shows the better effect on the recovery of oil and velocity of
the water through core pack.

Chasing water injection after WAG process helps to get the incremental recovery of
oil. The tapered WAG injection method with increasing WAG ratio gives around
4.2% incremental recovery during chasing water flooding after WAG process.

The CO2 gas at the reservoir temperature and pressure conditions is close to
supercritical behaviour and thus helps to improve the recovery of oil during
WAG injection process.

Gas trapping constant for various variants of WAG is found within the range of
1.3 to 2.8. This shows better gas trapping phenomena in the WAG process.

Abbreviations and nomenclature

CW
G
EOR
FVF
HC
HCPV
HCPV
LPG
PV
Q0
SWAG
VL
W
WAG

Chase water
Gas
Enhanced oil recovery
Formation volume factor
Hydrocarbon gas
Hydrocarbon pore volume
Hydrocarbon pore volume
Liquefied petroleum gas
Pore volume
Flow rate of oil
Simultaneous water alternate gas
Total line volume
Water
Water alternate gas.

Production performance of water alternate gas injection techniques

151

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