SPE

SPE 24367

Waterflooding Heavy Oils

G.E. Smith, Consultant
SPE Member

Copyright 1992, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Inc. This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Rocky Mountain Regional Meeting held in Casper. Wyoming, May 18-21, 1992. This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE Program CommMee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(@. Contents of the paper, as presented, have not been reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author@).The material, as presented, does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of PetroleumEngineers, its officers, or members. Papers presented at SPE meetings are subject to publication review by EditorialComminees of the S o c i e t y of Petroleum Engineers. Permissionto copy is restrictedto an abstract of not morethan 300 words. Illustrationsmay not be copied. The abstract shouldcontain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Write Librarian, SPE, P.O. Box 833836,Richardson, TX 75083-3836 U.S.A. Telex, 730989 SPEDAL.

ABSTRACT Medium/heavy oils are successfully waterflooded in the Uoydminster region of Alberta. Two major areas are Wainwright and Wildmere. This paper gives an explanation as to how and why those waterfloods work well and the insights gained from a theory of fractal flow. Oil is gradually "wrung" out of the formation while water is circulated for some pressure support but primarily for gas saturation control. Injection water is quite dirty and plugs the formation. Induced fracture networks allow the formation to simultaneously filter the input water and dispose of the filtrate, a procedurewhich would otherwise be quite costly. Differences between fractal flow and frontal displacement are discussed along with the various mechanisms of pressure support , gas saturation control, mixed phase flow, imbibition and emulsification. Conclusions are drawn which include expected pressures, errors and special care required in voidage calculations. A schematic analogue of the life history of the injection/production interchange and suggestions for well and pattern conversions are also made. In difficult economic times, optimizing current production by altering the pressure gradients in the reservoir can yield a good return.

in the Uoydminster Region of Alberta. Two in particular are the Wainwright Field near Wainwright, Alberta and the Wildmere Field west of Uoydminster. Heavy oil water floods are different from those in lighter oils due to the relatively high absolute permeability of the reservoir and large pore throats with low aspect ratios, the displacement instability resulting from an adverse mobility ratio, the poor economics and therefore poor injection water quality, the weak nature of the rock matrix and several other factors. The differences in mechanisms lead to differences in performance, some of which are unexpected and yield a very effective process in some cases. FRONTAL DISPLACEMENT The theory of waterflooding is quite old in industry terms. Buckley & Leverett pioneered the theory and our applied understanding has changed little since their time. In their theory, displacement starts with only connate water and oil as incompressible phases. The shock front divides a region with only movable oil (being displaced), from one with only movable water. Only oil is produced prior to breakthrough and only water after. For partially depleted core, the notion of the displacement of one fluid by another is represented by a leaky piston (Figure I). The oil bank which builds in front of the displacing water is viewed as completely saturating the porous medium up to an immobile (connate) water saturation, just as in Buckley-Leverett theory.

Heavy oil waterfloods are operated by several companies

1References and illustrationsat end of paper

Waterflooding Heavy Oils

SPE 24367

The "leakage" of the piston is the oil left behind in the swept matrix, in the form of discontinuous ganglia* . It can also be viewed as injection water which "leaks" through the piston by virtue of a small continuous mobile water saturation within the bank. In the region between the oil bank (piston) and the producing well, water and oil/gas are continuous phases and all can move, as the piston displaces the current saturations. Oil, water and gas are produced and oil production (& WOR) is relatively constant until the oil bank reaches the producer. At bank arrival there is a surge of oil production (with little or no water or gas) and then the producer breaks to water. Continued injection cannot drive residual oil from the reservoir because it is tied up in discontinuous ganglia which cannot be re-mobilized at easily achievable pressures. Further recovery awaits a mobilization mechanism which can be a miscible solvent, a surface tension reducing surfactant, a thermal front or a gaslwater interface which the oil can spread upon, etc. In less ideal displacements in more heterogeneous media, some pores or layers form continuous parallel flow paths for water and injected water is produced long before the oil bank arrives. Displacement is none-the-less frontal and stable; however, the graph of production is much less abrupt. Also, in low rate displacement, capillary imbibition is a significant process and after early arrival of the displacing water (down the smaller pores) oil production continues to ultimately yield a very high recovery (see collinsl, p 161). Water invades progressively larger pores and oil retreats to the largest pores, but saturations remain almost constant with distance. This is a "wringing" process or a "sideways displacement". UNSTABLE DISPLACEMENT There are many unstable processes which occur in nature and in engineered systems. Figures 3ad from show the results of chemical dissolution. The pattern formed, and shown, is called a "Fractal". A fractal is defined as a pattern, (2-D or 3-D) which is self-similar at any level of magnification and from any viewpoint. No matter how closely you look at it, it looks the same.

into a high viscosity fluid, even in an otherwise empty container where the fluids are apparently completely homogeneous, the displacing fluid will channel through the resident fluid in a manner identical to the chemical dissolution shown. The injected low viscosity fluid will "fracture" the resident fluid in a fractal pattern. In high mobility ratio displacements, in a Hele-Shaw cell, viscous fingering will also occur in a fractal pattern even in an apparently homogeneous medium. In real reservoirs the presence of both large and small scale heterogeneity will only aggravate the instability and result in even more driving mechanisms for fractal development. Not all aspects of fractal displacement are bad. The sweep, in a displacement sense, can obviously be poor but, as the varying images (Figures 3ad) show, it can also be quite reasonable. Because the fractal channels are a gross form of the doublet mechanism, they are not themselves subject to residual trapping but rather the residual is oil which is bypassed and unswept. It may still be a continuous phase however. Oil production therefore continues, often at economic rates, long after breakthrough of water. (Compare Figure 4 Oil Production [%PV] vs. Cumulative effluent [PV] where there is no oil produced after 0.5 PV injection and Figure 5 for a Wainwright preserved core from 3). The continued production of oil is sometimes visualized as "drag"; the oil being viscously dragged or emulsified and carried by the large volumes of water being circulated in the system. In my view these mechanisms are not the whole story and other important ones are: Pressure support Multi-phase (gasloil) expansion and flow Gas/Oil (GOR) control Imbibition Gravity drainage

PRESSURE SUPPORT

The randomness of the dendritic structure is the result of local heterogeneities (static or dynamic), at any point, as the process proceeds. If a low viscosity fluid is injected

The process of ganglia formation is often visualized as snap-off and short circuiting in pore doublets as shown on Figure 2. It is a less important trapping mechanism in rocks with low aspect ratios @ore body/pore throat) like Wainwright.

The most obvious mechanism of (oil) flow enhancement in dendritic or fractal displacement is the external provision of energy to the flow process. In frontal displacement we view pressure as a connecting-rod pushing on a piston. In the unstable process the water injection is more of a pair of hands surrounding and squeezing the oil out of the pores. Drive energy is provided by an external means. Pressure in the water phase is supported and is transferred to the oil phase. Pressure drives both phases independently toward a pressure sink at the producers.

SPE 24367

G.E. Smith
GAS (GOR) CONTROL

The low flood rate in Figure 4 (frontal vel. 0.1 mid) allows frontal displacement. Figure 5 shows the continued oil production in unstable displacement. Figure 5 also shows the reducing pressure as the permeability to water increases but oil still keeps flowing at high WOR and chemical slugs don't improve things much (see 3). In fact, judging from pressure, the chemicals, rather than displacing oil, permanently imped the flow of water while pressure displaces the oil. The disadvantage of the dendritic geometry is that water can develop short circuits directly from injection to production. These could result in the need to circulate large amounts of water at high velocities in order to raise the pressure much above that imposed by the producers. An advantage of the dendritic geometry is that oil remains a continuous phase throughout the majority of the reservoir and continues to be produced, albeit at high WOR.
MULTlPHASE (GAS /OIL) EXPANSION

Water injection, properly balanced, can be used to prevent this continuous gas phase from developing. When water injection is used in that sense, most of the drive energy comes from internal gas drive (expansion of the gas/oil phase) and water provides the control. The energy is internal, the control is external. If a material balance calculation is done on a heavy oil waterflood, as normally operated, it can be seen that around 75% of the energy is internal and 25% is from the water injection. The attempt in gas saturation control is to keep the gas saturation small but non-zero. This is difficult especially around wells which are pumped-off. There can therefore be a balancing act between:

- maximum well productivi, as a pressure sink, - low pressures resulting in large bubbles, possibly

- developing a continuous dendritic gas phase out

into the reservoir.
IMBIBITION

blocking pore throats, and

& FLOW

Under primary depletion the gas saturation eventually becomes large enough that gas becomes a continuous phase and moves independently of the oil, at least near the producers. If gas is lost from the hydrocarbon phase the viscosity increases and the phase shrinks. In a gas/oil/water system, as gas is lost the pressure must decline and as pressure declines so goes the drive energy and productivi. In light oils and reservoir rocks with small pore throats, gas bubbles cannot form and move in the reservoir. As pore throats become larger (-lOum ) in higher permeability rocks large numbers of small bubbles (-2um ) can form and move without blocking throats. Also, as the viscosity of the oil increases, the ability of the bubbles to separate and drift to the top of the reservoir diminishes (the boyancy is small and the viscous resistance to movement within the oil is large). The bubbles that do form in the reservoir can block small pore throats easier than larger ones and so tend to do so. This results in a displacement of the flow from the smaller to the larger pores; from water filled ones to oil/gas filled ones. In high permeability viscous oil reservoirs therefore, the oil and some gas move as a mixture phase which expands in bulk as pressure drops. This seems to be a beneficial phenomenon overall (see 4). If the gas phase becomes too large, it separates into a continuous phase. This continuous gas phase originates at the producer and grows outwards, again dendritically, and drains gas and energy at a rapid and wasteful rate.

The imbibition process in unstable displacements is much the same as it is in naturally fractured reservoirs. The invading water is imbibed into the matrix blocks from the fractures (high water saturation, injection, fingers) and oil flows into the fractures (high oil saturation, production, fingers).
DRAG

Thickening and slip of the wetting phase at the oil water interface result in the squeezing and drag of the hydrocarbon phase to the pressure sinks. In this mechanism the oil and water phases do not move independently as visualized in the relative permeability concept. The oil moves relative to water, which is also moving in the thin film of the wetting interface.
EMULSIFICATION

Some of the hydrocarbon becomes suspended in the water phase as a result of native surfactant and in-situ foam formation. This forms a very weak emulsion or micro-emulsion which is effective in transporting oil and in improving displacement.
GRAVITY EFFECTS

A primary effect of gravity drainage in heavy oil watetfloods is in film spreading of the oil on the water phase as a free gas phase forms. Over geologic time, even discontinuous oil ganglia, trapped in a segregating gas phase, can drain out leaving a very low residual oil saturation in the gas zone.

Waterflooding Heavy Oils

SPE 24367

In general, heavy oil reservoirs are not trapped by completely tight caprocks. It is usually the capillary entry pressure that prevents further upward migration of the oil. Thus, gas is not effectively trapped and it long ago escaped upwards, except for that in solution. Heavy oil reservoirs are usually initially saturated at the prevailing reservoir pressure. During primary depletion secondary gas caps can form. Since the displacement of viscous oil by gas is inefficient, high residual oil saturations probably still exist in secondary gas caps unless the film spreading mechanism allows for the almost complete drainage of the oil phase sufficiently quickly. It is possible for secondary gas caps to have very high oil saturations as well as high permeability to gas.

pressure (which is between the injection and producing pressures). This part of the reservoir sees very small gradients and flow rates. Because of generally poor economics, injection water quality is not usually very good. The slow "drag" process has large amounts of water being pumped through the reservoir and, as a conservation effort, most of the produced water is recycled back to injection. Gradually the formation plugs off at the injection points and continued injection results in high pressures and fracturing. When these formations, which are generally uncemented or weakly cemented, fail, at high pore pressure, a great deal of deformation and fabric damage takes place. Again the process is unstable and shifts at the whim of local heterogeneityto yield dendritic zones of enhanced permeability access to the formation. These too plug off eventually and a highly resistant "skin" forms between the injection at high pressure and the majority of the reservoir at a much lower pressure.

INJECTION INTO GAS

When injecting into such a gas cap there is a large specific surface area between the oil and gas phases. Water entering, squeezes the gas back into solution in the oil. The resulting loss of volume is very much larger than when gas is simply compressed and, therefore, it is easy for water to channel through such gas with very small pressure gradients. The gas goes into solution leaving water in its place, locally at very high saturation, again in a dendritic network and possibly occupying the largest (previously gas/oil foam filled) pores. As a result of the above, it is not recommended that injection be undertaken within gas cap zones unless it is believed that the gas saturation can be completely displaced and the zone re-pressurized prior to being put on production.

THE END IS HERE

Jumping straight to the ultimate end of the process, a large area of skin prevents access by the pressure source to the formation and an effective network of dendritic drainage (now water filled) keeps the bulk of the reservoir at the low bottom hole producing pressure imposed by high-volume lift at the producers (Figure 7). The reservoir is all at a low pressure so oil production cannot occur and injection at reasonable rates cannot raise that pressure because of the large resistance between the water channels and the matrix in general. The low resistance dendritic drainage adds up to be a fracture like system and linear flow predominates at both injectors and producers. Oil production ceases quite a bi before one gets to this situation. The point is: that the injection of pore plugging water and production at low bottom hole pressures results in a gradual drop in average reservoir pressure which cannot be economically prevented. Figure 8 shows an analogue of the system. Initially the injection potential is felt at Node (2) [average reservoir potential] because the resistance 1 / k is small. If the short circuit resistance (1/L&, is large (open circuit: no channel), there is a large gradient between Node (2) [the oil bearing formation] and the producing well and good production. If a channel (short circuit) develops [(I /k), is small] then the producer goes to the injection potential and oil production ceases. Even in the absence of a short circuit, as injection continues the resistance l/b becomes larger due to plugging and the resistance 1/16,

WATERFLOOD LIFE CYCLE

The life cycle of a heavy oil waterflood usually begins with primary depletion. During that time a gas/oil mixture phase develops and flows to the wells. Pores and layers with large pore throats pass the majority of this lowquality hydrocarbon foam. Much of the rest of the reservoir plugs up with gas bubbles getting caught in small pore throats. When water injection begins, it channels unstably into the foam filled pores, driving the gas into solution and the oil into smaller pores or less permeable regions. This compounds the normal viscous instability that also results in a similar dendritic encroachment of injected water into the reservoir. The pressures, initially and ideally, would be high in a radial region surrounding the injectors. Similarly the pressures would be low in a region dominated by the producers which are producing at conditions substantially below the saturation pressure. Figure 6 shows the situation diagramatically. A large portion of the reservoir is at a pressure close to the saturation

SPE 24367

G.E. Smith 7)

becomes smaller due to depletion (saturation changes). Eventually the average reservoir potential is close to that at the producers and depletion is complete. Gradual pressure depletion means that a primary source of drive energy remains internal gas expansion and that production at GOR's exceeding solution, is necessary. It also means that the use of the Voidage Replacement equation: Voidage = NpBo + Np(Rp-R&Bg

Continuous careful management and analysis will keep these reservoirs producing economically, for a long period of time.

NOMENCLATURE
-effective permeability to oil -resistanceto flow of oil -effective permeability to water -resistance to flow of water -resistanceto flow of water in a short circuit -gas formation volume factor -oil formation volume factor -initial oil formation volume factor -water formation volume factor -original oil in place -oil produced -initial reservoir pressure -saturation pressure -injection pressure -well flowing pressure -pore volume -radius - injection/production influence -producing Gas/Oil -solution Gas/Oil -water produced -water injected

+ Wp - Wi

is not correct (derivation requires pressure=constant) and in order to calculate voidage or voidage replacement ratio a full material balance must be done. This is not difficult and it is always correct. In the absence of a gas zone, the equation which must be used is: Voidage
=

N(Boi-Bo) + NpBo + WpB, - Wi - compaction

Reservoirs such as Wainwright and Wildmere will always have GOR's above solution.

Pressure must decline in these reservoirs as there is no economical way to maintain it and there may not be any benefit in trying.
Maintaining zero voidage is probably impossible (and detrimental) however voidage must be kept small. Excess injection will either flow to the aquifer or will drive oil out of the developed field boundaries. The voidage equation: Voidage = NpBo + Np(Rp-R&Bg

REFERENCES
1 Collins, R.E., FLOW OF FLUIDS through Porous

Media, Reinhold, New York, 1961.

+ Wp - Wi

2 Daccord G. & Lenormand, Fractal patterns from chemical dissolution, Nature. 325,Jan 1987. 3 Hawkins, B.F, Taylor, K., 81 Nasr-El-Din, H.A., MECHANISMS OF SURFACTANT AND POLYMER ENHANCED ALKALINE FLOODING: APPLICATIONS TO DAVID LLOYDMINSTER AND WAINWRIGHT SPARKY FIELDS, CIM/AOSTRA Technical Conference, April, 1991, Banff
4 Smith, G.E., Fluid Flow and Sand Production in

normally used is alwavs incorrect in these situations. Since displacement is not frontal, there is much to be gained just by changing things around (changing injection or producing rates, exchanging injectors for producers, drilling in-fill wells, etc.). Changes to line drive (or converting channeled injectors to producers) is probably the only reasonable way to negate short circuits. Additional producing wells may be required to restore productivii and overall injection rates should drop by the short circuiting volume.

Heavy Oil Reservoirs Under Solution Gas Drive, SPE Production Engineering, May 1988 pp169-180 & CHOA Reservoir Handbook, p113, Canadian Heavy Oil Association, 1991

xorr
Water Flood Residual Oil Bank Primaw Residual (Oil becomes discontinuous by snap olf)

Figure I: Frontal displacement

Figure 2: Pore doublet

- 4 k z m m

Figure 3a: 2D pattern grown radially from a point

Figure w: Pattom from the inside cylinder

Figure ?Ic: 2.7 cm3Imin

Figure 3d: 40 cm31min

0.5

1.5

25

Curnulaih Core Effluent [PI/)

Figure 4: Heavy Oil Flood in Berea o 0.1 mld

100 90 80 70 60 X 50
40

400 350 300 250 zoo 150 loo 50

0

5
g
h

30 20 10 0 0 0.5 1

1.5

2.5

Curnulaik Core Effluent (W)

Figure 5: Heavy Oil Flood in Preserved Core

2 . 3 mld

Figure 7: Pressure zones late in the life of a Heay~ Oil waterflood

W h

, I , of the dl (2) bearing formation

Figure 8: Analogue of system