Save the world: recycle floods

The second oldest surviving polymer flood in the province is still improving oil recovery. What enables it to still go strong after so many years?

This blog post is brought to you by Proven Reserves Exploitation Ltd., one of our technology partners.

AppIntel is the quickest and easiest way to find information on water flood or ASP . Just type it in AppIntel's natural language search bar to see all the technical information included in the regulatory approvals.

The operator of this flood is still converting water injectors to polymer. They hope for a 10% increase in oil recovery. Their application to the regulator contains their pattern and plans and the success of other patterns in the pool.

Get their application documents through our self-serve, secure check out.

Flood additives: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Injecting additives had an illustrious past and a promising future. Here are twelve application documents that show the results of flood additives.

1. Polymer flood primer

When thinking of flood additives, polymer is the first that may come to your mind. .

We all know that polymer increases sweep and decreases fingering by increasing injectant viscosity. But there is more to it than that.

One regulatory application has a great primer on polymer flooding.

2. ASP flood with a six fold increase in oil rate

ASP is a polymer flood with an alkali and a surfactant pad injected in front.

Some ASP floods are very prolific. One ASP scheme boasts a six fold increases in oil rate? The before and after production plots are amazing.

3. Polymer in harsh environments

Brine character severely impacts the effectiveness of a polymer flood. One operator applied to move from fresh water to salty produced water to mix with her polymer.

In her application, she discussed the affect of water temperature and salinity on her polymer flooding project.

4. Microbes in flooding

The promise of microbial flooding is inexpensive water channeling control. No diversion chemicals such as polymer need be injected.

All you need to inject is food for the microbes that already exist in your reservoir.

5. Watch out for CO2 myths

CO2 is often praised as a cheap, environmentally conscious flood injectant.

But what happens when you ignore directional permeability in a miscible flood? Your CO2 flood might be an expensive failure.

6. CO2 immiscible

CO2 does not need to be injected at ultra high pressures. Even an immiscible CO2 flood can provide extra oil recovery.

7. Failure - CO2 might not be to blame

One operator ended a miscible CO2 pilot stating that the experiment achieved its objective but the incremental recovery was only 3%.

He thought a CO2 flood is a set-it-and-forget-it type of scheme. Oops.

8. Cost savings for miscible floods

Miscible floods improve recovery by chemical interaction of the solvent with the oil in the reservoir. Although the solvent is a mixture of propane and butane, you can think of it as if you were washing the rock with varsol.

A solvent bank is important -- that is where the solvent does it's mixing work. One operator reported his success in reducing the bank size (and therefore the cost) of solvent in his flood.

9. Even solvent floods need maintenance

Solvent floods can boost recovery to over 75% of oil in place. But they require maintenance like every other flood.

Check out a solvent flood that some someone neglected.

10. Quaternary recovery - past miscible flooding

You've heard of hydrocarbon miscible flood as a tertiary recovery method. But what comes after that?

One operator decided to push the solvent bank with lean CO2 to get even more recovery.

11. Alternating water and gas

Water and gas (WAG) floods resurface every few years in popularity. WAG works well in certain conditions.

12. After WAG

One operator discussed relative perm effects and GOR behavior of a failed WAG flood. She also shows the impact of these on recovery.

We have shown you twelve flood additive field trials to help you find opportunities for your flood. And here are three bonus scoops on gas injection.

13. Dispose of acid gas and sweep out oil

Thinking about how to use waste like acid gas to generate more oil revenue?

Textbooks and gee-whiz articles like this one may help you understand a bit about acid gas injection. But if you really want to understand how they perform in the field, you must read others' acid gas injection application documents.

14. Overcoming hurdles to sour gas injection

After 50 years of production, one operator decided to add sour gas injection to his pool. It is a great idea to add sour gas injection to your oil pool, but getting approval is not easy. See this operator's struggle with the regulator before his scheme was approved.

15. Dry gas cycling: choice for depleted oil pools

Some operators give up early. But some have kept their floods going for over seventy years. End of life strategies breathe new life into old floods.

One strategy to prolong the life of your reserves is to cycle dry gas.

In conclusion

We have shown you twelve field examples for flood additives (and three more bonus examples). Call Proven to help you plan additives for your flood to improve recovery. We are flood experts -- we have worked on over 200 floods.

Tags: Polymer, Gas Injection, Flood, Cut costs

Granger Low   14 Feb 2020

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