Middle East Field Water Production Mechanisms

Abstract

Abstract The control of water production has always been one of the most critical challenges in Middle East oil fields. Good evaluation of water production mechanism results in a proper control on water, since there is a different job design for different mechanism. In general, water coning and/or multilayer channeling is the most production problem mechanisms in Middle East oil fields. The purpose of this work is to apply water control diagnostic plots technique to identify excessive water production mechanism. This method was applied for wells in Middle East sandstone oil reservoirs using actual production history data to generate log- log plots of WOR (water oil ratio) and dWOR/dt (simple time derivative of water oil ratio) vs. time. The plots were found to be effective in differentiating whether the well is experiencing water coning (negative slope) or multilayer channeling (positive slope for the time derivative of water oil ratio curve). The diagnostic plots applied in this study provide a handy method for quick evaluation of excessive water production mechanisms in order to select wells candidates for water control treatment.