Assessment of Water Injection-Related Scale Risks for an Onshore Carbonate Oilfield Incremental Development Project in Central Arabia

Abstract

Abstract Water flooding has been widely used in the industry as a secondary recovery technique to improve recovery from oil reservoirs. One of the major operational challenges is addressing the compatibility between injected water and formation water in order to proactively lower the probable risk of scale formation near wellbore. A thorough investigation was conducted to evaluate the probability of scale formation and identify the effective mitigation options for a Central Arabian incremental development project. A holistic approach was implemented at this study to achieve the objective through reviewing analogue reservoirs, running numerical predictions of scale tendency, carrying out laboratory experiments to evaluate the compatibility of the formation water with the injected mix water and conducting in-situ coreflood experiments to quantify the potential risk of formation damage. This study identified an inherently high calcium sulfate scale risk associated with the planned seawater injection in the new reservoir development and within the surface production fluid process facilities. Appropriate scale mitigation options including the potential impact of an injection seawater sulfate removal process facility will be discussed in this paper.