Waterflooding: Performance Predictions and Surveillance

Waterflooding is one of the most commonly implemented improved oil recovery techniques in the world. In this course the participants are presented the fundamental concepts of oil displacement by water and provided techniques for estimating recovery, evaluating behaviour and monitoring performance of waterflood projects.

This 5-day course covers the reservoir engineering aspects of waterflooding in clastic and carbonate reservoirs. The seminar combines geology, rock and fluid properties, and immiscible displacement theory to develop waterflooding prediction techniques and to aid in the evaluation of actual waterflood performance behaviour. Detailed predictions of oil and water producing rates, water injection rates and recovery efficiency are presented. Selection of waterflood patterns (regular, irregular, peripheral), prediction of sweep efficiency (areal, vertical and displacement), and an analysis of other variables which control recovery efficiency are included. Also discussed are waterflood surveillance techniques such as production testing, production plots (rate-time, rate-cum, WOR-cum, etc.), VRR analysis, volumetric sweep (reservoir conformance) determination, injection profile testing, pressure transient testing, step-rate testing, Hall plots (pros and cons), pattern balancing, bubble maps, and injection efficiency determination. These surveillance techniques provide the engineer with data required for the efficient management of both new and mature waterfloods. The course content and example problems have been selected to teach and illustrate important concepts.