Basra University for oil & gas

College of oil and gas Engineering

Oil & gas engineering department

Water flooding
Areal sweep efficiency

By Ali K. Al-Maliki, MSc

Novemeber, 2017

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 Water flooding
Outline
Areal sweep efficiency, EA
Mobility ratio
Flood patterns
EA prediction methods

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 Areal sweep efficiency

EA: The fraction of the floodable pore volume area swept by the
injected water

EA increases steadily with injection from zero at the start of the EA continues to increase
flood until BT occurs at a slower rate after BT

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 Areal sweep efficiency

 The areal sweep efficiency depends on the following three

main factors:

1. Mobility ratio M
2. Flood pattern
3. Cumulative water injected W inj

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 Mobility ratio

The mobility of any fluid, λ: the ratio of the effective permeability of

the fluid to the fluid viscosity

The mobility ratio M: the mobility of the displacing fluid to the

mobility of the displaced fluid

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 Mobility ratio
Relative permeability of oil k ro

Because the displaced oil is moving ahead of the water front in the
noninvaded portion of the pattern, kro must be evaluated at the initial
water saturation Swi.
Relative permeability of water krw
The displacing water will form a water
bank that is characterized by an
average water saturation in the swept
area. This average saturation will
remain constant until BT, after which
the average water saturation will
continue to increase
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 Mobility ratio
Mobility ratio from the start to breakthrough

The mobility ratio will remain constant from

the start of the flood until breakthrough
occurs 7
 Mobility ratio
Mobility ratio after breakthrough

The mobility ratio M increase after BT as the

mobility of the water krw/μw will increase after
breakthrough due to the continuous increase
in the average water saturation
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 Flood patterns

 When developing a field, injection and producing wells in a regular

geometric pattern so that a symmetrical and interconnected
network is formed

 The commonly used flood patterns are:

1-Direct line drive
2-Staggered line drive
3-Five spot These have two types: normal and
4-Seven spot inverted. Normal pattern has one
producer in a square area whilst
5-Nine spot inverted has one injector per
square area 9
 Flood patterns
Direct-line drive:
 d =distance between adjacent rows
of producers and injectors
a
 a = distance between wells of the
same type
a
 The sweep efficiency of this pattern
improves as the d/a ratio increases d

 The ratio of producers to injectors

is unity for this pattern
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 Flood pattern
Staggered Direct-line drive:
 Modification of direct line drive pattern
a
 Wells in alternate rows are displaced
one-half the inter-well distance d
 The effect of this staggering is to
increase the breakthrough efficiency
for low d/a ratios as compared to the
direct line drive
 This flood pattern is preferable to
the direct line drive.
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 Flood patterns

Five-Spot pattern:
 A special case of the staggered line
drive where the d/a ratio is 0.5
 The ratio of producers to injectors is unity
 The most commonly used flooding pattern:
 It gives good sweep behavior
 It is flexible enough that other flood
patterns can be generated simply by
rearranging the position of the injection
and production wells 12
 Flood patterns
Nine-Spot pattern
 An injection-production well
ratio of three
 This type of system is very useful if a
high injection capacity is needed due to low
permeability
 The nine-spot is flexible pattern and
can be revised to result in a 1:1
injector-producer ratio pattern, either
five-spot or line drive, with minimum
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effort.
 Flood patterns
Inverted nine-Spot pattern
 Same as nine-spot but in inverse

 Producing wells outnumber injection wells by a factor of

three
 This pattern is useful when fluid injectivity is high

 The inverted nine-spot is flexible pattern and can be revised to

result in a 1:1 injector-producer ratio pattern, either five-spot or
line drive, with minimum effort.
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 Flood patterns
Seven-Spot pattern
 A staggered line pattern with d/a ratio of 0.866

 Two injection wells per producer

a
 The injection wells are located at the
corner of a hexagon with a production
well at its centre

 This pattern is used when injectivity is low

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 Flood pattern
Example of converting flood patterns
Producers were Adding infill wells
converted to injectors

Inverted nine-spot five-spot Inverted nine-spot

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 Combination effect of flood pattern and M

 An experimental
study by Craig et al

 Study the influence of

fluid mobilities on the EA
resulting from water
injection

 Five spot patterns.

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 Combination effect of flood pattern and M
At the start of the flood,
the water front takes on a
cylindrical form around
the injection point
Due to the continuous
injection, pressure
distribution and
corresponding
streamlines are developed
between the injection and
production wells
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 Combination effect of flood pattern and M

The water front

gradually begins to
deform from the
cylindrical form and
cusp into the
production well as
water breakthrough
occurs

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 Combination effect of flood pattern and M
Effect of M on EA
 At breakthrough, only
65% of the flood
pattern area has been
contacted (swept) by
the injection fluid with
a mobility ratio of 1.43
and 82.8% when the
mobility ratio is 0.4

 Lower mobility ratios would increase the areal sweep efficiency

and higher mobility ratios would decrease the EA
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 Areal Sweep Prediction Methods

EA calculations is made at 3 parts:

1-Before breakthrough
2-At breakthrough
3-After breakthrough

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 Areal Sweep Prediction Methods

EA calculations before BT:

 The areal sweep efficiency before BT is

proportional to the volume of water injected

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 Areal Sweep Prediction Methods

EA calculations at BT:

 Craig proposed correlation

between sweep efficiency at
EABT and the mobility ratio

 Used for 5-spot pattern

 Use the following figure for

determining Ea

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 Areal Sweep Prediction Methods

EA calculations after BT:

 The areal sweep efficiency also increases due to the gradual increase
in the total swept area with continuous injection ( same as Ed)

 Dyes et al. (1954) correlated the increase in the EA after BT with the
ratio of water volume injected at any time after breakthrough, Winj, to
water volume injected at breakthrough, WiBT,

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