Biopolymer Pilot Facilities - Coalinga

Abstract

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc. Introduction Shell Oil Co. and the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) plan to demonstrate additional oil recovery by enhanced waterflooding technique in the East Coalinga Field of California, which is shown in Fig. 1. Shell will provide 70 percent of the funding required for the polymer-flooding demonstration pilot. pilot. In older fields in California having moderate viscosity oils, waterfloods have been marginally successful or potential projects have been delayed pending development of mobility control technology. Where justified, the optimum process for a supplemental recovery project would be polymer flooding directly project would be polymer flooding directly following primary oil production. The Coalinga project falls in this category, and it has been project falls in this category, and it has been designed to determine if the added expense of a polymer flood over a conventional waterflood is polymer flood over a conventional waterflood is justified in the Temblor Zone II reservoir. This reservoir has produced primary oil since 1901 and has an unfavorable water displacement mobility ratio of 14. Background Fig. 2 indicates the Coalinga Field and pilot project area. The magnitude of the pilot project area. The magnitude of the full-scale project from Shell's Temblor Zone II reservoir in Coalinga is 35 million bbl from polymer flooding. Of this amount, 8 million bbl polymer flooding. Of this amount, 8 million bbl would be recovered in excess of a waterflood. These parameters for the full-scale project are outlined in Table I. The initial phase of the project is scheduled to commence July 1976 with the injection of 5,000 B/D water into four injection wells. Following 1 year of water injection, biopolymer will be injected for about 1.5 years to increase the water viscosity and thus reduce the mobility ratio. The choice of this polymer is discussed in Ref. 1. After polymer injection, additional water injection will follow. Ultimate additional oil above primary from the 130-acre project area is expected to amount to 2,600,000 bbl, project area is expected to amount to 2,600,000 bbl, including 600,000 bbl resulting from polymer injection instead of just water. Daily production will increase to 1,000 bbl oil and production will increase to 1,000 bbl oil and 4,000 bbl water. Using improved estimates of fluid properties and reservoir description from the demonstration project, a numerical simulator would be applied to compare the performance of polymer flooding and waterflooding. Following polymer flooding and waterflooding. Following a reliable comparison, full-scale expansion would be made. Pilot parameters with some typical reservoir parameters and a type log from the Temblor Zone II reservoir are included in Tables II and III and Fig. 3.