Understanding of formation damage is a key theme in a waterflood project. An integrated multidisciplinary approach is required to determine an optimal design and strategy. An operator has developed a suite of tools to tackle these issues and help in adequate design and optimization of waterfloods.
Introduction
Many waterfloods in the operating phase do not perform as expected. Often this is because of well-injectivity issues where the required water quality for the injected water is either not properly defined (i.e., by the subsurface disciplines) or not properly managed (i.e., at the surface facilities). A rapid decline in well injectivity can result when injecting under matrix conditions, and a loss in reservoir containment caused by out-of-zone injection (OOZI) or a short-circuiting injector and producer can occur when injecting under fractured conditions, all negatively affecting reservoir sweep.
Subsurface and Subsurface-Modeling Work Flows
To determine an optimal waterflooding concept, it is important for the integrated work flow that the outcome of the subsurface assessment be a range of technically feasible scenarios.
