Process Design of Cyclic Water Flooding by Real-Time Monitoring

Abstract

The gradual decline in the oil production rate of water flooded reservoirs leads to decrease in the profit of water flooding system. Although cyclic water injection (CWI) was introduced to reduce the descending trend of oil production in water flooded reservoirs, it must be optimized based upon the process parameters. The objective of this study is to develop all process design criteria based upon the real-time monitoring of CWI process in a naturally fractured reservoir having five producing wells and five injector wells completed in an Arab carbonated formation containing light crude oil (API = 42 deg). For this aim, a small pilot oil field was selected with water injection facilities and naturally producing oil wells and all data were collected from the field tests. During a five years' field test, the primary observations at the onset of shutdown periods of the water injection system revealed a repeatable significant enhancement in oil production rate by a factor of plus 5% leading us to assess the application of CWI. This paper represents the significant parameters of pressure and productivity affected during CWI in naturally fractured carbonate reservoirs based upon a dual porosity generalized compositional model. The results hopefully introduce other oil producer companies to the potential of using CWI to increase oil production in conventional water injection systems. The results also outline situations where such applications would be desirable.