Deadly CO2 flood myths you don't know

What happens when you ignore directional permeability in a miscible flood? Your flood might be a spectacular failure.

Without AppIntel, you can't find the field experiences of flood failures. By using AppIntel, you can find flood failure analysis reported to a picky regulator.

There are deadly flood myths that many producing companies believe. Don't be fooled by them.

Myths like radial flow and even sweep. Myths include set and forget flooding.

The featured application shows how he attempted to improve CO2 retention and take advantage of the directional permeability of the formation. You can see his flood repair plans by reading his application documents.

Help yourself to the pertinent application pages through our inexpensive, self-serve application documents library.

What happens when you ignore directional permeability?

Although many operators knew about the directional permeability trend of this formation, one operator ignored it to his detriment. He injected expensive food grade CO2 into a formation only to have it appear in just one month in an offsetting producer.

All his work and expense to increase the reservoir pressure to minimum miscibility pressure was lost -- he effectively turned the field into a CO2 re-circulation project.

If you review all the related applications, you will see that his spectacular failures, how he attempted to fix it, and how he finally abandoned the project.

These failures happen too often

This operator ignored directional permeability trends to his detriment. But he's not the only one.

I remember another operator telling me that he had spent over half a million dollars on three separate simulations and still watered out his flood within a month. It was in this same formation.

Directional permeability trends are an important component of flood design. Ignore them at your own peril.

Don't use your least experienced engineer handle your expensive flood. You could end up in broke.

Check out the results

Textbooks and classes may help you understand a bit about the general principles of flooding. But if you really want to understand how floods perform in the field, you must read others' flood application documents. They report progress on floods to the regulator. Each application is ground truthed to actual UWIs. Each application is adjudicated by a picky regulator.

How would you find these applications without AppIntel?

Tags: Gas Injection, Flood

Granger Low   24 Jun 2017

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