THIS is why floods really fail

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

High water cuts. High lift requirement. Extra load on facilities.

Early water breakthrough is the bane of water floods. Here's why it happens and what you can do about it.

Without AppIntel, you can't find the field experiences of early water breakthrough. By using AppIntel, you can find operator's reports of flood failure to the regulator.

One operator is drilling horizontal wells that are likely to experience premature water breakthrough. She isn't paying attention to lessons learned when the pool was developed with vertical wells. Important lessons about fighting directional permeability.

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

Previous success with vertical wells

This field was one of the first to demonstrate directional permeability using vertical wells.

Before injection began, primary recovery was projected to be 5%.

When the right injection pattern was used, ultimate recovery tripled to 15%.

But when the wrong injection pattern was used, total recovery actually decreased to 4.5%!

The reason? Injected water was following natural fractures and watering out any wells Northeast and Southwest of the injectors.

Following the permeability direction

Any wells not on the NE/SW trend received great support and produced clean oil for a long time.

Secondary oil recovery in the pattern was an astonishing three times the primary recovery! But wells in line with the directional permeability trend watered out almost immediately.

But that was four companies ago. The current owner of the asset has forgotten the lesson and is redeveloping with horizontal wells without regard to directional permeability. Boy are they in for a surprise.

Horizontal well orientation may cause premature breakthrough

The current trend of drilling horizontal wells N/S or E/W without regard to highest permeability direction can invite quick water breakthrough.

The natural permeability direction causes water channels to intersect the horizontal wells.

In a formation with a well defined permeability direction, fracked horizontal wells often follow the permeability trend. This makes the water breakthrough problem even worse.

I've seen an operator simulate a reservoir flood three times and still get instant water breakthrough after the simulations. All because he ignored the directional permeability.

Don't fight the trend, use it

Why fight the directional permeability trend? You can't win that fight.

But once you know about directional permeability you can use it to your advantage.

Orient the horizontal wells to match the highest permeability trend. That way you can reduce water breakthrough and increase oil recovery.

Working the injection pattern with the perm trend improves sweep and reduces fingering.

What happens when you ignore directional permeability?

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

Quick water breathrough. Low recovery. Early abandonment.

Although many operators have known about the directional permeability trend of this formation, some new operators are ignoring it to their detriment.

Similar to a CO2 flood that experienced breakthrough in a week. All the work and expense to increase reservoir recovery was lost.

Here's a question to ponder: How would you fix a flood where the horizontal wells were drilled at a disadvantageous azimuth?

These failures happen too often

This operator is ignoring directional permeability trends to her detriment. But she's not the only one.

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

On the other hand, if you find a flood where directional permeability was ignored, there may be an opportunity to resurrect it.

Proven has several ways to fix floods. Our Optiflood tool can improve recovery. We can adde $20 million of reserve value to 95% of the flood we review.

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?

Beautiful people listen to their floods

Your water flood is trying to get your attention. There are a few very simple steps to learning your first words in its language.

Beautiful people don't turn a deaf ear to their floods. They know that well run water floods add reserves and production for a long time.

Tags: Fracturing, Tight, Flood

Granger Low  25 Jul 2018

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