Waterflooding in Colombia: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

The PDF file of this paper is primarily in Spanish, with small portions of English text throughout the manuscript. A complete English version is not available. In Colombia the water injection process has been applied in 19 oil fields at a commercial level. The processes implemented normal and inverted patterns of 5, 7 and 9 points; some others were initially designed for pressure maintenance. In any injection process the volumetric sweep efficiency depends on the geology of the reservoir sands, type of sedimentary basin and on the mobility of the reservoir fluids, because of this, the incremental oil recovery factor of the Colombian field's water injection processes is between 1% and 9%. This paper presents the results of fillup, plateau, decline, secondary recovery efficiency and typical problems of processes in Colombian fields. The average oil recovery factor in Colombia is approximately 18%, around 90% of the 280 Colombian oil fields are still in primary production and many of them have a big loss of the reservoir energy. By the mentionned above, and with the objective of rising the oil production in the country, the implementation of waterflooding processes plays a fundamental role for both increasing the oil recovery factor and giving energy to the reservoirs for the implementation of any other technology that can increase the productivity of the wells. Today there are being designed and implemented an important amount of water injection projects. A significant percentage of Ecopetrol's production target in 2015 - 2020 depends on the implementation massive of the water injection process, this is why 27 new water injection processes have been stablished as a strategy to incorporate reserves, breaking historical rhythms of implementation. The generation of standards and best practices in the technical, operational, environmental, social, legal, implementation and surveillance aspects, has been identified as a key factor to ensure that the Company's know-how supports this goal, reducing implementation time and increasing quality and efficiency of new waterflooding pilots and expansions projects in Colombia.