Solvent flood: set it and forget it

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

You can set and forget a flood. But if you forget it, you'll regret it.

One operator forgot about his solvent flood for several years. He forgot to check the voidage. He forgot to balance the patterns. After many years the regulator noticed VRR noncompliance.

The operator assigned one of his lowliest staff to make a quick application to fix the noncompliance.

The poorly conceived application caused the regulator to look into the pool even more deeply and discover even more compliance problems and flood irregularities.

His application was closed and he received even more noncompliance penalties. Within a year, the miscible flood was cancelled.

You can see this epic fail in his application documents within moments -- just click on the button below. Hopefully you can use his experience to guard against such a loss.

Because he forgot to balance his flood, he recovered 40% less reserves than other well-run solvent floods.

Finding opportunities in the errors of others

In his follow up application, he even included 3-D seismic over the feature.

What if you purchased this flood and restored it to health by balancing the patterns?

If you get it functioning as well as the best miscible floods in the province, you could add 40 million barrels of oil reserves.

Read his application to find out more.

Solvent floods must be balanced

A solvent flood can improve recovery greatly. But like water floods and polymer floods, solvent floods need to be constantly reviewed and balanced.

This flood maintenance is as just as critical as keeping pumps working and compressors maintained.

Pattern balancing is regular maintenance

Why do some operators spend lots of time and money keeping their equipment working, but spend no time at all balancing their floods?

If an injection pump broke, a mechanic would have it fixed in a few hours. If pump rods broke a rod rig would be out the next week to replace them.

Floods must be balanced at least yearly in order to keep them functioning and healthy -- in order to keep production and reserves high.

Like changing you oil

Balancing a flood is like changing the oil in your car. If you put if off too long, performance suffers and life is shortened.

You know what it's like when a wheel is out of balance. Ignore the vibration and it turns into wobbling. Ignore the wobbling and it turns into loss of steering. Ignore the loss of steering and it turns into collision, damage and death.

It's the same if you ignore balancing your flood.

Like regular exercise

Pattern balancing is like regular exercise. If you never raise your arm above your head, soon you won't be able. If you never balance your flood patterns, eventually you'll reduce the life of your reserves.

Pattern balancing is maintenance for your pool and performance security for your reserves.

Apathy reigns

From AER records, we find that the average flood in the province was pattern balanced 5 years ago. Less than a third of the floods were balanced in the last 3 years.

All floods need to be balanced every year or more often.

You can tell if your flood needs balancing by taking our flood quiz.

The reward for balance

At Proven, we find extra reserves in every flood we balance. Ninety-five percent of the time we find at least $20 million in extra reserve value.

We use our proprietary pattern balancing framework, Optiflood.

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.

What is pattern balancing?

In simple terms, flood pattern balancing is realigning injection to suit the changing flood. As floods mature, injection capacity naturally decreases and water production grows in some wells.

Pattern balancing reduces water cut and improves sweep. It arrests oil decline and improves reserves.

You don't need to simulate a pool to balance its patterns. Rather, just start listening to what its trying to tell you. Where is the water cut high? Which injectors have been shut down? Which oil wells have a low fluid rate? What's the most recent pressure?

Tags: Closure, Gas Injection, Flood

Granger Low   2 Feb 2017

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