Production evolution patterns and development stage division of waterflooding oilfields

The continuous growth of recoverable reserves in a waterflooding oilfield has a significant impact on the patterns of production evolution. A new production evolution model is established by improving the Weng Cycle model. With the new model, the statistical correspondence between the production decline stage and the reserve-production imbalance is clarified,and the correlation of water cut with the recovery percent of recoverable reserves is discussed, providing quantitative basis of reservoir engineering for dividing development stages of oilfield and defining mature oilfields. According to the statistics of oilfields in eastern China, the time point corresponding to the reserve-production balance coefficient dropping to less than 1dramatically is well correlated the beginning point of production decline, thus the time when the reserve-production balance coefficient drops dramatically can be taken as the initiation point of production decline stage. The research results show that the water cut and the recovery percent of recoverable reserves have a good statistical match in the high water cut stage, and it is more rational to take both the start point of production decline stage and the water cut of 90%(or the recovery percent of recoverable reserves of 80%) as the critical criteria for defining a mature oilfield. Five production evolution patterns can be summarized as follows: growth–peak plateau–stepped decline, growth–stepped stabilizing–stepped decline, growth–stepped stabilizing–rapid decline, growth–peak plateau–rapid decline, and growth–continuous decline.

An Integrated Oil Production Enhancement Technology Based on Waterflooding Energy Recovery

A new integrated oil production enhancement technology based on water-flooding energy recovery is proposed.After providing an extensive review of the existing scientific and technical literature on this subject,the proposed integrated technology is described together with the related process flow diagram,the criteria used to select a tar-get facility for its implementation and the outcomes of the laboratory studies conducted to analyze emulsion formation and separation kinetics.Moreover,the outcomes of numerical simulations performed using Ansys CFX software are also presented.According to these results,using the proposed approach the incremental oil production may reach 1.2 t/day(with a 13%increase)and more,even at low flow rates(less than 10 t/day),thereby providing evidence for the benefits associated with this integrated technology.

Changing characteristics of ultralow permeability reservoirs during waterflooding operations

The characteristics of ultralow permeability reservoirs changed after waterflooding. Thin- section analysis and scanning electron microscopy （SEM） of core samples from inspection wells indicated that calcite and barite were formed in ultralow permeability reservoirs during waterflooding operations. Some asphaltene precipitates on the surface of formation rock would influence the reservoir porosity, permeability, wettability, and electrical properties. In this paper, the changes of physical, electrical, and fluid properties of ultralow permeability reservoirs during waterflooding operations were analyzed. This provides important information to improve waterflooding performance in ultralow permeability reservoirs.

Influence of meandering river sandstone architecture on waterflooding mechanisms: a case study of the M-I layer in the Kumkol Oilfield, Kazakhstan

In order to explore the influence of sandstone architecture on waterflooding mechanisms using the architecture method,and taking as an example the M-I layer of the Kumkol oilfield in the South Turgay Basin,Kazakhstan,we portrayed the architecture features of different types of sandstones and quantitatively characterized heterogeneities in a single sand body in meandering river facies.Based on the waterflooding characteristics of point bar sand and overbank sand according to waterflooded interpretation results in 367 wells and numerical simulation results of well groups,we finally analyzed the remaining oil potential of the meandering river sandstone and pointed out its development directions at the high water cut stage.The result shows that because lateral accretion shale beds are developed inside single sand bodies,the point bar sand is a semi-connected body.The overbank sand is thin sandstone with poor connectivity,small area and fast lateral changes.The heterogeneity of the overbank sand is stronger than the point bar sand.The sandstone architectures control the waterflooding characteristics.In meandering river sandstones,the bottom of the point bar sand is strongly waterflooded,while the top of the point bar sand and most of the overbank sand are only weakly waterflooded or unflooded.The thickness percentage of unflooded zone and weakly waterflooded zone in point bar sand is 40％,and the remaining oil in its top part is the main direction for future development.

Experimental study on the oil production characteristics during the waterflooding of different types of reservoirs in Ordos Basin, NW China

Waterflooding experiments were conducted in micro-models(microscopic scale)and on plunger cores from low permeability,extra-low permeability and ultra-low permeability reservoirs in the Ordos Basin under different displacement pressures using the NMR techniques to find out pore-scale oil occurrence state,oil production characteristics and residual oil distribution during the process of waterflooding and analyze the effect of pore structure and displacement pressure on waterflooding efficiency.Under bound water condition,crude oil mainly occurs in medium and large pores in the low-permeability sample,while small pores and medium pores are the main distribution space of crude oil in extra-low permeability and ultra-low permeability samples.During the waterflooding,crude oil in the medium and large pores of the three types of samples are preferentially produced.With the decrease of permeability of the samples,the waterflooding front sequentially shows uniform displacement,network displacement and finger displacement,and correspondingly the oil recovery factors decrease successively.After waterflooding,the residual oil in low-permeability samples is mainly distributed in medium pores,and appears in membranous and angular dispersed phase;but that in the extra-low and ultra-low permeability samples is mainly distributed in small pores,and appears in continuous phase formed by a bypass flow and dispersed phase.The low-permeability samples have higher and stable oil displacement efficiency,while the oil displacement efficiency of the extra-low permeability and ultra-low permeability samples is lower,but increases to a certain extent with the increase of displacement pressure.

Statistical prediction of waterflooding performance by K-means clustering and empirical modeling

Statistical prediction is often required in reservoir simulation to quantify production uncertainty or assess potential risks.Most existing uncertainty quantification procedures aim to decompose the input random field to independent random variables,and may suffer from the curse of dimensionality if the correlation scale is small compared to the domain size.In this work,we develop and test a new approach,K-means clustering assisted empirical modeling,for efficiently estimating waterflooding performance for multiple geological realizations.This method performs single-phase flow simulations in a large number of realizations,and uses K-means clustering to select only a few representatives,on which the two-phase flow simulations are implemented.The empirical models are then adopted to describe the relation between the single-phase solutions and the two-phase solutions using these representatives.Finally,the two-phase solutions in all realizations can be predicted using the empirical models readily.The method is applied to both 2D and 3D synthetic models and is shown to perform well in the P10,P50 and P90 of production rates,as well as the probability distributions as illustrated by cumulative density functions.It is able to capture the ensemble statistics of the Monte Carlo simulation results with a large number of realizations,and the computational cost is significantly reduced.

Production performance forecasting method based on multivariate time series and vector autoregressive machine learning model for waterflooding reservoirs

A forecasting method of oil well production based on multivariate time series(MTS)and vector autoregressive(VAR)machine learning model for waterflooding reservoir is proposed,and an example application is carried out.This method first uses MTS analysis to optimize injection and production data on the basis of well pattern analysis.The oil production of different production wells and water injection of injection wells in the well group are regarded as mutually related time series.Then a VAR model is established to mine the linear relationship from MTS data and forecast the oil well production by model fitting.The analysis of history production data of waterflooding reservoirs shows that,compared with history matching results of numerical reservoir simulation,the production forecasting results from the machine learning model are more accurate,and uncertainty analysis can improve the safety of forecasting results.Furthermore,impulse response analysis can evaluate the oil production contribution of the injection well,which can provide theoretical guidance for adjustment of waterflooding development plan.

Production Dynamic Prediction Method of Waterflooding Reservoir Based on Deep Convolution Generative Adversarial Network(DC-GAN)

The rapid production dynamic prediction of water-flooding reservoirs based on well location deployment has been the basis of production optimization of water-flooding reservoirs.Considering that the construction of geological models with traditional numerical simulation software is complicated,the computational efficiency of the simulation calculation is often low,and the numerical simulation tools need to be repeated iteratively in the process of model optimization,machine learning methods have been used for fast reservoir simulation.However,traditional artificial neural network(ANN)has large degrees of freedom,slow convergence speed,and complex network model.This paper aims to predict the production performance of water flooding reservoirs based on a deep convolutional generative adversarial network(DC-GAN)model,and establish a dynamic mapping relationship between well location deployment and output oil saturation.The network structure is based on an improved U-Net framework.Through a deep convolutional network and deconvolution network,the features of input well deployment images are extracted,and the stability of the adversarial model is strengthened.The training speed and accuracy of the proxy model are improved,and the oil saturation of water flooding reservoirs is dynamically predicted.The results show that the trained DC-GAN has significant advantages in predicting oil saturation by the well-location employment map.The cosine similarity between the oil saturation map given by the trained DC-GAN and the oil saturation map generated by the numerical simulator is compared.In above,DC-GAN is an effective method to conduct a proxy model to quickly predict the production performance of water flooding reservoirs.

Correct understanding and application of waterflooding characteristic curves

Through reviewing the generation process and essential characteristics of waterflooding curves, the essence and characteristics of Zhang Jinqing waterflooding curve and Yu Qitai waterflooding curve recommended in Chinese Petroleum Industry Standard 'Calculation methods for Recoverable Oil Reserves(SY/T5367—1998)' were discussed, and some technical issues related to the curves were examined in-depth. We found that:(1) All the waterflooding curves are based on empirical formulas derived from oilfield production experience and statistics methods, and can characterize oil displacement features by water quite well.(2) A new waterflooding curve can be derived by combining waterflooding parameters and using different mathematical calculations as long as the parameter combinations and mathematical operation meet a linear relationship, so proposing new waterflooding curves by changing the combination mode has no practical significance anymore.(3) The upwarp of waterflooding curve in the extremely high water cut stage is because the mobility ratio curve has an inflection point with the rapid rise of water cut after reaching a certain value, and the later rapid rise of mobility ratio changes the original two-phase flow dynamics.(4) After entering into water cut stage, all the waterflooding curves with linear relationship can be used to make prediction, even curves with inflection points, as long as they have a straight section above the inflection point.(5) Actual data of waterflooding oilfields has proved that Type A, Zhang Jinqing and Yu Qitai waterflooding curves all can predict accurately oil recoverable reserves in extremely high water cut stage and can be promoted.

Mechanisms and experimental research of ion-matched waterflooding to enhance oil recovery in carbonate reservoirs: A case of Cretaceous limestone reservoirs in Halfaya Oilfield, Middle East

Based on systematically summarizing the achievements of previous ion-matched waterflooding researches,the diversity and synergy of oil recovery enhancement mechanisms and the interaction between mechanisms are examined according to two classification standards,and the influence of behaviors of different ions on different mechanisms and oil displacement efficiency are investigated.Ionic strength is proposed to characterize the behavior differences of univalent and divalent ions,the relationships between ionic strength,effective concentration,and mechanisms are established to characterize the ion behavior behind various mechanisms,and evaluate the performance of ion-matched injection water.The mechanisms of enhancing oil recovery by ion-matched waterflooding include:(1)The ion-matched water can reduce the ion strength and match the ion composition of formation water,thereby reducing the difference between the effective concentration of univalent ions and divalent ions on the surface of carbonate rocks,and improving the effective concentration of potential determining ions(especially SO42-).(2)It can improve wettability,oil-water interface properties,pore structure and physical properties of the reservoir,and finally enable the establishment of a new ionic equilibrium conducive to waterflooding while breaking the original equilibrium.In this study,experiments such as relative permeability curve,interfacial tension,and core-flooding were carried out on carbonate core samples from the Cretaceous Mishrif Formation reservoirs in Halfaya Oilfield,Middle East,a method for injection water evaluation was established and the injection water suitable for these reservoirs was selected:6 times diluted seawater.Compared with ordinary seawater,oil displacement efficiency can be increased by more than 4.60%and compared with the optimum dilution of formation water,oil displacement efficiency can be increased by 3.14%.

Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation of Oil Field Waterflooding Effect

Oil field waterflooding is a complex man-controlled systematic behavior, and the related evaluation methods vary greatly. This paper put forward a fuzzy comprehensive method of evaluating controlled development level by analysis of the macroscopic evaluation to oil field waterflooding effect with combination of original reservoir geological state. This fuzzy evaluation technique bears unique advantages because there is little difference among evaluation indexes which represent the dynamic and static state of regional neighborhood of development units (blocks, Production Company, etc.). Not only the mathematical method for evaluating oil field waterflooding effect is set up, but also the method is applied in three blocks of D oil field. The calculated results show the effectiveness and practicability of the method.

Simulation Studies on Comparative Evaluation of Waterflooding and Gas Injection in Niger Delta Thin-Bed Reservoir

There is a need to increase ultimate recovery from petroleum reservoirs. In order to guarantee efficient resource extraction from reservoirs, primary recovery methods cannot be relied on throughout the life of a well. There is a time in the life of a reservoir when the primary energy will not be sufficient to ensure economic recovery. Complete abandonment of the reservoir at this point may not be a sound engineering decision given the huge investments in developing the asset. Secondary recovery methods present potentials for the recovery of the other trapped resources. The choice of the secondary recovery means depends on the reservoir and geologic conditions and should be determined by modeling and simulation. In this work, a simulation study is conducted for Niger Delta Field ABX2 to determine the performance of water-flooding and gas injection in the recovery of the asset after the primary recovery stage. ECLIPSE Blackoil simulator was used for the modeling and simulation. An equal reservoir rectangular grid block was designed for both the waterflooding and water injection comprising a total of 750 grid cells. Water and gas were injected in both cases at an injection rate of 11,000 stb/d and 300,000 scf/d for waterflooding and gas injection respectively. From the results of the simulation, it was realized that waterflooding gave a higher total oil recovery than gas injection. The difference in oil recovery from water-flooding and gas injection amounted to 0.08 MMstb/d. The Field Oil Recovery Efficiency (FOE) for waterflooding and gas injection was 38% and 16% respectively giving a difference of 22%. The waterflooding method was troubled with excessive water cuts due to water breakthroughs. Waterflooding was chosen against gas injection to be applied to Field ABX2 to improve recovery after primary production ceased.

Nuclear magnetic resonance experiments on the time-varying law of oil viscosity and wettability in high-multiple waterflooding sandstone cores

A simulated oil viscosity prediction model is established according to the relationship between simulated oil viscosity and geometric mean value of T2spectrum,and the time-varying law of simulated oil viscosity in porous media is quantitatively characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR)experiments of high multiple waterflooding.A new NMR wettability index formula is derived based on NMR relaxation theory to quantitatively characterize the time-varying law of rock wettability during waterflooding combined with high-multiple waterflooding experiment in sandstone cores.The remaining oil viscosity in the core is positively correlated with the displacing water multiple.The remaining oil viscosity increases rapidly when the displacing water multiple is low,and increases slowly when the displacing water multiple is high.The variation of remaining oil viscosity is related to the reservoir heterogeneity.The stronger the reservoir homogeneity,the higher the content of heavy components in the remaining oil and the higher the viscosity.The reservoir wettability changes after water injection:the oil-wet reservoir changes into water-wet reservoir,while the water-wet reservoir becomes more hydrophilic;the degree of change enhances with the increase of displacing water multiple.There is a high correlation between the time-varying oil viscosity and the time-varying wettability,and the change of oil viscosity cannot be ignored.The NMR wettability index calculated by considering the change of oil viscosity is more consistent with the tested Amott(spontaneous imbibition)wettability index,which agrees more with the time-varying law of reservoir wettability.

Effect of water salinity on oil/brine interfacial behaviour during low salinity waterflooding: A mechanistic study

In recent years,controlling the salinity and composition of the injected water has become an emerging enhanced oil recovery(EOR)technique,often described as low salinity(LS)waterflooding.This work is done with the intention to contribute to the ongoing discussions about LS waterflooding mechanism(s).For this purpose,a series of different experiments were conducted.At first,the effect of salinity on the interfacial tension(IFT)and the contact angle was evaluated with a crude oil sample.Then to achieve more accurate results in observing oil/water interface,similar IFT experiments were also carried out on a synthetic oil containing asphaltenes.Thereafter,microscopic visualization using glass micromodel was performed on the interface of the synthetic oil sample and brines.Four brine solutions including Sea Water(SW),it's dilutions and formation water(FW)were used for various experiments.Finally,to investigate the presented mechanism by other authors,a series of Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy(ESEM)analysis on the synthetic oil was carried out to understand better the phase behaviour after contacting both synthetic oil and water phases from the micromodel experiment.Based on the existing mechanism,there exists an optimal concentration beyond which dilution is no longer an effective process.

Comparative study of VOF, LS, and VOSET on pore-scale immiscible waterflooding modeling

The pore-scale mechanism of the waterflooding contributes to enhancing oil recovery,which has been widely emphasized in the petroleum industry.In this paper,the performances and accuracy of three tracking interface algorithms,including VOF,LS,and VOSET,are compared and analyzed through twophase flow in the conceptual model of pore-throat.The results show that the VOSET method combines the advantages of the other two methods,which not only satisfies the mass conservation but also improves the continuity of the physical quantities near the interface.Then,based on the binary image of the pore,the two-dimensional micro pore model is reconstructed by extracting image contour.The grid independence of the reconstructed pore model is verified by the single-phase flow simulation.The waterflooding process in the reconstructed pore model is simulated using the VOSET method,and the effects of displacement speed and wettability on the oil recovery are analyzed.The morphologies of residual oil under different conditions of wettability are investigated and analyzed.The study provides a basic theory for modeling the pore-scale oil-water flow and optimizing the scheme of the water injection.

Addition of surfactants to Low Salinity Waterflooding in microfluidics system to increase oil recovery

This study was conducted to investigate the phenomenon of oil removal from inside pores using a self-designed microfluidic test kit.An artificial micromodel chip as a representation of porous rocks has been created with a uniform pore structure design and made of PMMA(Polymethyl Methacrylate)material.The micromodel chip has a porosity of 27.8%as well as a permeability of 2.7 Darcy.By using the microfluidic test kit,this study has investigated how low salinity water(LSW)injection with MgCl_(2)divalent ions and the addition of anionic surfactant,linear alkylbenzene sulfonate mixed with nonionic surfactants,nonylphenol ethoxylate(NP-10)affects to oil recovery.The injection of LSW and surfactant solution was carried out with different injection stages,injection rates and surfactant solutions con-centrations.Visual images during the injection process are recorded for analysis,which is the advantage of dynamic testing using this microfluidic test kit over conventional coreflooding.From this study,it is indicated that the selection of ions contained in LSW affects the success of LSW injection.Reducing the surfactant injection rate from 50 mL/min to 20 mL/min can increase the oil recovery from 1.27%to 4.29%.Oil recovery was also higher on surfactant injection which resulted in lower interfacial tension of the system based on the calculation of interfacial tension obtained from the Chun-Huh and Ghosh equations from the Winsor test.From all injection scenarios carried out in this study,the highest increase in oil recovery of 26.87%OOIP was obtained by injecting surfactant solutions directly in the secondary stage without prior LSW injection.

Analytical model of 2D leakoff in waterflood-induced fractures

Waterflood-induced fractures,also known as self-induced fractures,spontaneously form at injection wells during waterflooding.These fractures propagate long distances through rock,allowing injected fluids to travel far away from a well,both within and outside the flooding layer.Essentially,the me-chanics of waterflood-induced fracture propagation is similar to that of hydraulic fractures,which are intentionally created for reservoir stimulation.Fracturing models developed for hydraulic fractures can also be applied to waterflood-induced fractures.However,waterflood-induced fractures are typically pumped with much larger volumes of water or brine and grow much longer in time.As a result,fluid leakoff from waterflood fractures into the formation is more extensive and two-dimensional(2D),a characteristic that is often ignored in a majority of modern fracturing simulators,making their appli-cation to waterflood fractures unreliable.In this work,we revisit the problem of leakoff for long-growing waterflood-induced fractures and develop a new analytical model for fluid leakoff that provides improved predictions of fracture geometry and can be easily implemented in fracturing simulators.We incorporate the developed solution into the classical Perkins-Kern-Nordgren(PKN)model of fracture growth,which shows that the choice of the Carter or a 2D leakoff model greatly impacts fracture ge-ometry at large time.The conducted parametric study shows while a toughness-dominated regime af-fects fracture evolution,most of fracture lifetime occurs in a viscosity-and-leakoff-dominated regime.We also develop an asymptotic solution for a leakoff profile in the limiting case of 2D leakoff domination(~~M and~~K).Finally,we study 3D fracture growth and out-of-zone injection with three layers and a complex structure of zones.The study shows that ignoring the 2D leakoff during simulation results in a significant overestimation of fracture geometry predictions.The present work,thus,plays an important role in improving waterflood fracture modelling,as it highlights the significance of 2D leakoff in waterflood-induced fractures and provides a reliable analytical model for fluid leakoff that can be incorporated into modern fracture simulators.

Low-salinity-based enhanced oil recovery literature review and associated screening criteria

A thorough literature review is conducted that pertains to low-salinity-based enhanced oil recovery(EOR).This is meant to be a comprehensive review of all the refereed published papers,conference papers,master’s theses and other reports in this area.The review is specifically focused on establishing various relations/characteristics or"screening criteria"such as:(1)classification/grouping of clays that have shown or are amenable to low-salinity benefits;(2)clay types vs.range of residual oil saturations;(3)API gravity and down hole oil viscosity range that is amenable for low salinity;(4)salinity range for EOR benefits;(5)pore sizes,porosity,absolute permeability and wettability range for low-salinity EOR;(6)continuous low-salinity injection vs.slug-wise injection;(7)grouping of possible low-salinity mechanisms;(8)contradictions or similarities between laboratory experiments and field evidence;and(9)compositional variations in tested low-salinity waters.A proposed screening criterion for low-salinity waterflooding is introduced.It can be concluded that either one or more of these mechanisms,or a combination thereof,may be the case-specific mechanism,i.e.,depending on the particular oil–brine–rock(OBR)system rather than something that is"universal"or universally applicable.Therefore,every OBR system that is unique or specific ought to be individually investigated to determine the benefits(if any)of low-salinity water injection;however,the proposed screening criteria may help in narrowing down some of the dominant responsible mechanisms.Although this review primarily focuses on sandstones,given the prominence of carbonates containing^60%of the world’s oil reserves,a summary of possible mechanisms and screening criteria,pertaining to low-salinity waterflooding,for carbonates is also included.Finally,the enhancement of polymer flooding by using low-salinity water as a makeup water to further decrease the residual oil saturation is also discussed.

A control volume based finite element method for simulating incompressible two-phase flow in heterogeneous porous media and its application to reservoir engineering

Applying the standard Galerkin finite element method for solving flow problems in porous media encounters some difficulties such as numerical oscillation at the shock front and discontinuity of the velocity field on element faces.Discontinuity of velocity field leads this method not to conserve mass locally.Moreover,the accuracy and stability of a solution is highly affected by a non-conservative method.In this paper,a three dimensional control volume finite element method is developed for twophase fluid flow simulation which overcomes the deficiency of the standard finite element method,and attains high-orders of accuracy at a reasonable computational cost.Moreover,this method is capable of handling heterogeneity in a very rational way.A fully implicit scheme is applied to temporal discretization of the governing equations to achieve an unconditionally stable solution.The accuracy and efficiency of the method are verified by simulating some waterflooding experiments.Some representative examples are presented to illustrate the capability of the method to simulate two-phase fluid flow in heterogeneous porous media.

Stochastic and upscaled analytical modeling of fines migration in porous media induced by low-salinity water injection

Fines migration induced by injection of low-salinity water(LSW) into porous media can lead to severe pore plugging and consequent permeability reduction. The deepbed filtration(DBF) theory is used to model the aforementioned phenomenon, which allows us to predict the effluent concentration history and the distribution profile of entrapped particles. However, the previous models fail to consider the movement of the waterflood front. In this study, we derive a stochastic model for fines migration during LSW flooding, in which the Rankine-Hugoniot condition is used to calculate the concentration of detached particles behind and ahead of the moving water front. A downscaling procedure is developed to determine the evolution of pore-size distribution from the exact solution of a large-scale equation system. To validate the proposed model,the obtained exact solutions are used to treat the laboratory data of LSW flooding in artificial soil-packed columns. The tuning results show that the proposed model yields a considerably higher value of the coefficient of determination, compared with the previous models, indicating that the new model can successfully capture the effect of the moving water front on fines migration and precisely match the effluent history of the detached particles.