WATER

FLOODING

TEKNIK RESERVOIR II
 OUTLINE

– Microscopic efficiency of immiscible displacement

– Macroscopic displacement efficiency of a linear waterflood
– Reservoir-geology considerations in the design and operation of waterfloods
– Immiscible displacement in two dimensions-areal
– Vertical displacement in linear and areal models
– Waterflood design
– Waterflood monitoring
– Field case studies: waterflood examples
 Introduction of Waterflooding

– The formula for overall waterflood oil-recovery efficiency ER might be simply stated
as the product of three independent terms:
ER = EDEIEA where ED = the unit-displacement efficiency,
EI = the vertical-displacement efficiency,
EA = the areal-displacement efficiency
(Assuming independence of these three factors is not valid for real oil reservoirs)
– Waterflood is a dynamic process that lasts for several decades;
– Opportunities to modify the original waterflood design and operating guidelines on
the basis of analysis of the actual field production data;
– Real-time monitoring of waterflood performance is required.
 Introduction of Waterflooding

– The most important aspect of evaluating a field waterflooding project is

understanding the reservoir rocks.
– Knowing the depositional environment at the pore and reservoir levels
– The diagenetic history of the reservoir rocks must be ascertained
– The structure and faulting of the reservoir (interconnectivities among the various
parts of the reservoir, especially the injector/producer connectivity)
– The water/oil/rock characteristics (wettability, residual oil saturation to
waterflooding, and the oil relative permeability at higher water saturations)
 Limitation of Waterflood
Technology
– Not always the best technology
– Can have complicating factors
– Petroleum engineer should evaluate potentially complicating factors such as
compatibility of the planned injected water with the reservoir’s connate
water; interaction of the injected water with the reservoir rock (clay
sensitivities, rock dissolution, or generally weakening the rock framework);
injection-water treatment to remove oxygen, bacteria, and undesirable
chemicals; and the challenges involved in separating and handling the
produced water that has trace oil content, naturally occurring radioactive
materials (NORMs), and various scale-forming minerals.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– At the pore level, wettability and pore geometry are the two key considerations.
– The interplay between wettability and pore geometry in a reservoir rock is
capillary pressure curves and water/oil relative permeability curves.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Wettability
The contact angle is used to
define which fluid phase is
more wetting – for low contact
angles, the water phase is more
wetting, whereas for high
contact angles, the oil phase is
more wetting.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– The contact angle depends on many variables, including:
– The composition of the crude oil and the amount of gas in solution
– The salinity and pH of the connate brine
– The mineralogy of the rock surfaces
– The salinity and pH of the injected water
– The concentration of surface-active components (e.g.,
asphaltenes) that can adsorb on the rock surfaces affects
wettability
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Two types of laboratory measurements are used to estimated
wettability
– The crude-oil/brine IFT values can be measured on smooth rock surfaces of
various mineralogies.
– Amott tests
– High-quality water/oil capillary pressure (PC) and water/oil relative
permeability (krw/o) data, both of which are strongly affected by
rock wettability, are needed as input to waterflood calculations.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Pore Geometry
– Result of its depositional and diagenetic history.
– The depositional environments determines a rock’s grain size and sorting.
– Post-depositional diagenetic changes caused by various types of
cementation, leaching, and clay alteration will impact a rock’s pore
characteristics.
– Pore distributions in carbonate rocks often are more complicated because of
vug networks and fractures.
– There are many scales of pore-geometry heterogeneities
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– (a) Photomicrograph (b) water/oil relative permeability curve for a sandstone
with large, well-connected pores.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– (a) Photomicrograph (b) water/oil relative permeability curve for a sandstone
with small, well-connected pores.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Capillary Pressure
– Capillary pressure affects waterflood performance and engineering
calculations because the extent to which the water/oil flood front is
vertically and horizontally spread during the waterflood is controlled by the
Pc vs. Sw imbibition curve.
– The minimum wetting or water saturation from the drainage process is
termed the connate (or irreducible) water saturation, and the maximum
water saturation from the imbibition process defines the minimum
nonwetting-phase saturation, or the residual oil saturation to waterflooding
Sorw.
Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Initial Water-/Oil-Saturation Distribution
– Initial water-/oil-saturation distribution depends on its hydrocarbon history
and has a significant effect on its waterflooding potential.
– The original water-/oil-saturation distribution is important to understand for
waterflooding because it controls the efficiency of the waterflood in portions
of the reservoir.
– It also relates directly to the residual oil saturation that can be achieved at
the end of a waterflood.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Relative Permeability
– The characteristics of imbibition oil/water relative permeability curves
influence the nature and efficiency of the waterflood displacement and how
much of the OOIP will be recovered before the waterflood economic limit is
reached.
– The shapes of the imbibition water/oil relative permeability curves depend
on pore geometry and wettability.
– Laboratory-determined water/oil relative permeability data should be
obtained at the best approximation of reservoir conditions.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Residual Oil Saturation
– For waterflooding, the two most important numbers for a reservoir rock are the
connate-water saturation SWC and the residual oil saturation Sorw.
– Connate-water saturation determines how much oil initially is in each unit
volume of rock when the reservoir is discovered
– Residual oil saturation is how much of the OOIP will remain in rock that will be
swept by injected-water volumes.
– Assuming Bo is unchanged, the unit-displacement efficiency is
𝑆𝑜𝑟𝑤 𝑆𝑜𝑟𝑤
𝐸𝐷 = 1 − =1−
𝑆𝑜𝑖 1 − 𝑆𝑤𝑐
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– The residual oil saturation can be measured several ways.
– It can be determined as part of all relative permeability laboratory
studies.
– Historically, short core-plug “floodpot” tests have been run in the
laboratory, and only the rock sample’s porosity, absolute air
permeability, connate water saturation, residual oil saturation, and
permeability at the two endpoint saturations have been reported.
– Laboratory tests should be conducted long enough for the
displacement to be taken to its true end point.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Two methods can be performed, displacement tests or by using a
centrifuge.
– Displacement tests historically have been used, but because of
improvements in centrifuge technology, the centrifuge approach is
becoming more common.
– Usually, floodpot-test times are inadequate to reach a true
residual oil saturation value.
– Imbibition capillary pressure measurements obtain more-reliable
values for water-wet porous media.
Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Initial Gas Saturations
– In many oil reservoirs, a free-gas saturation formed during the early
production period because the waterflood was not initiated before
the reservoir pressure had dropped through the oil bubble point
pressure.
– For many years, the effect of this gas saturation on residual oil
saturation has been a subject of considerable technical interest.
– The residual oil saturation decreased as trapped-gas saturation
increased.
– The residual gas phase occupies the center of the pore bodies and
hence can reduce the volume of oil that is trapped.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Other Considerations
– Most laboratory tests have been run at the surface temperature and
pressure conditions using dead crude oils and constant brine salinity when
measuring water/oil PC vs. SW and kr data.
– Over the past decade, several researchers have published papers concerning
studies of the effect of temperature, salinity, and oil composition on
wettability and waterflood oil recovery.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– Mobility Ratio
– The mobility of a phase is defined as its relative permeability divided by its
viscosity.
– Mobility combines a rock property (relative permeability) with a fluid
property (fluid viscosity).
– Mobility related to the amount of resistance to flow through a reservoir rock
that a fluid has at a given saturation of that fluid.
– Low-viscosity fluids generally have high mobility and high-viscosity fluids
generally have low mobility.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– The mobility ratio M
𝑘𝑟𝑤 𝜇𝑜
𝑀=
𝜇𝑤 𝑘𝑟𝑜
– Mobility ratios are considered to be either “favorable” or “unfavorable”.
– A favorable mobility is a low value ( 1); this means that the displaced phase
(oil) has a higher mobility than the displacing phase (water). An unfavorable
mobility ratio (> 1) is the other way around.
– A favorable mobility ratio means that the displaced oil phase can move more
quickly through the reservoir rock than the displacing water phase.
 Microscopic Efficiency of
Immiscible Displacement
– In most reservoir situations, water’s viscosity is lower than oil’s,
the mobility ratio is unfavorable for water to displace oil efficiently.
– However, the relative permeability of water at residual oil
saturation is lower by a factor of two to eight than that of oil at
connate-water saturation.
– Hence, for many reservoirs, the mobility ratio is close to unity
(favorable) if the oil viscosity is greater than the water viscosity at
reservoir conditions only by a factor of five.
 Next Week Personal Assignment

Fractional Flow & Buckley-Leverett

Theory
Find the complete literature about those
theory, resume it in a A4 Paper, and
bring it into next week class (2hr-class)
Reservoir-Geology Considerations in
the Design and Operation of
Waterfloods
– All oil reservoirs are heterogeneous rock formations
– The primary geological consideration in waterflooding evaluation
is to determine the nature and degree of heterogeneities that exist
in a particular oil field.
– Reservoir heterogeneities can take many forms, including
– Shale, anhydrite, or other impermeable layers that partly or completely
separate the porous and permeable reservoir layers
– Interbedded hydrocarbon-bearing layers that have significantly different rock
qualities – sandstones or carbonates
– Varying continuity, interconnection, and areal extent of porous and
permeable layers throughout the reservoir
Reservoir-Geology Considerations in
the Design and Operation of
Waterfloods
– Directional permeability trends that are caused by the
depositional environment or by diagenetic changes
– Fracture trends that developed because of regional tectonic
stresses on the rock and the effects of burial and uplift on the
particular rock layer
– Fault trends that affect the connection of one part of an oil
reservoir to adjacent areas, either because they are flow barriers
or because they are open conduits that allow unlimited flow along
the fault plane
Reservoir-Geology Considerations in
the Design and Operation of
Waterfloods
– Another consideration is the structure of the reservoir.
– Structure creates dipping beds that dip at various angles.
– The interplay between the bed angle, gravity, and the oil/brine
density difference at reservoir conditions significantly affects the
relative vertical and horizontal flow behaviors.
– Structural considerations also can include whether the oil column
has an underlying aquifer or an overlying gas cap, either of which
can significantly affect the likelihood of successfully waterflooding
the oil column.
Reservoir-Geology Considerations in
the Design and Operation of
Waterfloods
– The process of evaluating a reservoir’s geology begins when the
reservoir is discovered and is placed on primary production.
– After a waterflood has been initiated, the production- and
injection-well data provide additional insight into the internal
characteristics of the rock volume that is being flooded.
– In fact, the waterflood production-well data (the water and oil
rates as a function time) are critical because they are the first data
that related directly to the interwell connectivity within the
reservoir and that validate or cause modification of the
geoscientists’ concepts of the various levels of reservoir
heterogeneities.
Reservoir-Geology Considerations in
the Design and Operation of
Waterfloods
– During waterflood, tracers can be injected to track which
injector/producer pairs are well connected and which are poorly
connected.
– Types of tracers available are radioactive water tracers, chemical
water tracers, radioactive gas tracers, and chemical gas tracers.