Affiliation:
1. Humble Oil & Refining Co.
Abstract
Published in Petroleum Transactions, AIME, Volume 210, 1957, pages 190–195.
Abstract
A laboratory investigation was conducted to determine quantitatively the extent to which connate water was contacted and displaced by invading flood water. In these experiments the connate water in unconsolidated sand packed columns was completely displaced by injecting water. The nature of this displacement was similar to that previously described for single-phase miscible fluid displacement studies, and thus the presence of a non-wetting immiscible phase did not appreciably change the nature of the displacement. The effects of water injection rate, column length, and oil viscosity on connate water displacement were investigated.
It is concluded that the connate water in a reservoir is the water which actually displaces oil from the pores of the rock during a water flood. During a water flood the connate water forms a zone which separates the invading flood water from the continuous oil phase. The size and shape of connate water bank is chiefly dependent on the oil viscosity and the column length.
Introduction
Water flooding is one of the most widely used techniques for the secondary recovery of oil. Presently, however, it is still not possible to recover all the oil in a reservoir by water flooding. The research described in this paper was conducted as part of a study to determine the conditions under which 100 per cent oil recovery could be attained by water flooding. The particular objective of this work was to determine if any chemical agent, regardless of its nature, placed in the flood water could be effective in influencing the mechanism of displacement of the oil by water.
It has been known for many years that water does not displace all the oil in a reservoir because a portion of the oil is "trapped" and held immobile by capillary forces. This oil is trapped within the pores of a water-wet rock when it becomes broken into discontinuous globules. Initially, when oil is present at high saturations within the pores of a water-wet rock, the connate water forms rings around the points of contact of the sand grains and may even completely fill small cavities between grains, whereas the oil occupies the larger void spaces between the grains.
Publisher
Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)
Cited by
6 articles.
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