8 benefits of flood balancing you don't know

There are some of the benefits of pattern balancing that you haven't heard before. How many benefits do you know?

This post is by Proven Reserves, one of our information partners.

Optimizing a flood by pattern balancing is a task rarely attempted. But it should be completed every year. Pattern balancing brings the quickest, easiest and cheapest reserve adds. It's one of the cheapest ways to add production. It has the lowest finding costs of any operation.

One operator balanced his flood pattern and told the regulator about it. You can see his results in his regulatory application. You can get it in moments by ordering it from AppIntel.

We've seen many out-of-balance floods sold three times to different operators without being balanced. Of the 1000 active floods in Alberta, we estimate that only 50 have been balanced in the last ten years.

Here's some of the benefits of pattern balancing. We've also included 3 Nevers of pattern balancing.

1. Increases field-wide recovery

Pattern balancing always increases recovery by adding sweep in unswept areas of the reservoir.

2. Reduces field-wide water cut

Pattern balancing gets water out of reservoir areas that have high water cuts.

3. Improves under-performing patterns

The objective is to improve all the flood patterns to perform as well as the best one.

4. Ensures water gets to where it's needed most

Looks for lean patterns and beefs them up.

5. Resolves injectivity problems

Critically reviews each injector with an eye to improving injectivity.

6. Makes use of directional permeability to improve recovery

Taking advantage of directional permeability can more than double recovery.

7. Determines the best VRR strategy for the field

100% voidage replacement is not always the best strategy for the reservoir. Pattern balancing identifies the voidage replacement best strategy.

8. Identifies infill opportunities

We recommended a new infill on one small flood where all the producers had watered out. The new well we recommended came on with high initial rates and clean oil.

Optiflood - a pattern balancing framework

Proven Reserves has a pattern balancing tool called Optiflood. Optiflood is a system to collect and review production, injection and pressure information in a water flood.

Optiflood allows review of how the performance of the flood changes over time.

Optiflood is not a stream line modeling tool.

Optiflood is not a grid block simulator.

Optiflood is a disciplined review framework of water flood patterns.

95% of the time, we add more than $20 million of reserve value by balancing the patterns.

The three of Nevers of pattern balancing

A. Never begin a reservoir simulation without performing a pattern balance first. Such a simulation task without this forethought is just a fun blackbox with a million degrees of freedom.

B. Never sell a flood without balancing it first. Why leave the increased production rates and recovery for someone else's upside?

C. Never leave a flood you've acquired unbalanced for more than three months after purchase. Why buy something and not capture the upside?

Historic applications can indicate pattern analysis

Often regulatory applications are submitted as a result of a flood pattern analysis. By reading past applications on your properties, you can discover previous operator's attempts to optimize the flood. You can see what worked. And you can see what failed.

During a water flood review, one operator found that the aquifer was stronger than expected. Proposed injectors were not converted, voidage replacement was reduced and the pressure is still 80% of virgin.

Tags: Polymer, Flood, Cut costs

Granger Low   Updated 30 Mar 2022

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