SPE 164661

Overcoming the Typical Operational Problems & Cost of Water Injection

Using Dumpflooding
Rami Helaly, A. Bekheit, M. Farahaty, M. Tawfik, Agiba Pet. Co.

Copyright 2013, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the North Africa Technical Conference & Exhibition held in Cairo, Egypt, 15–17 April 2013.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have
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Abstract
Meleiha North East oil Field is located in the Egyptian Western Desert. Its estimated value for the OIIP is
125.5 MMSTBO. The field started production in the year 1986 and was subjected to 4 years of natural
depletion. The reservoir mainly consists of three producing layers; all are heterogeneous with local poor
horizontal connectivity and low natural pressure support. Consequently, and during that period of natural
depletion, the recovery of only 14.7 MMSTBO caused the reservoir pressure to decline from an initial value
of 2300 Psi to 1000 Psi; a slope of approximately (-325 Psi/year). After applying water-injection in the year
1990, the pressure decline-slope got reduced to (-30 Psi/year). Currently the field contains 27 producers and
3 injectors. The distance to the nearest water-source well is approximately 10 Kilometers.
Maintaining continuous injection remained a challenge due to the typically associated operational
problems; the long length of the injection lines increased the frequency of line leakage, corrosion, and
blockage. Both water-source and injection wells require regular maintenance operations to handle problems
such as casing leaks and ESP’s maintenance. The necessity of flushing the injection lines after each
operation results in additional time losses. Other problems maybe related to issues with the injection plant.
All of these operational difficulties eventually affect the reservoir pressure performance and consequently
decrease the production performance.
As an attempt to improve the performance of water injection, a dump-flood project was initiated. The
idea is based on using the pressure differential between the perforated intervals within a single well to drive
the water coming from a relatively high pressure water-bearing zone to a lower-pressure oil-bearing zone(s).
Well NE-41 was initially drilled as water injector. The RFT measurements indicated that the pressure in three
oil bearing zones (B-I, III & IV) averaged around 400 Psi, while the pressure in a water-bearing zone (B-VI)
was found to be 2250 Psi. Hence, the well was selected to be a pilot for dumpflooding. After completing the
well as planned, a PLT was performed and its results indicated that the water-bearing zone produced 1100
BWPD that were distributed among the three recipient zones. The project therefore was considered
successful for the following reasons:
 Avoiding all the typical operational problems such as surface leakages, casing leakages, and ESP's
maintenance,
 Providing a minimum cost for supplying the reservoir pressure by water injection.

Introduction
Field Description and History

Meleiha NE Field has the typical stratigraphic column of the western desert; the main producing layers within
the shallow targets (i.e. around 5500 FT/SS) are located within Bahariya formation that is an Upper
 2 SPE 164661

Cretaceous (Albian/Cenomanian) formation composed mainly of sandstone, silty sands, and barriers of clay
and limestone formations. The geological structure at the level of Bahariya formation is represented by a
three way dip closure, controlled to the south by a NW-SE trending major extensional fault. The oil
accumulations are mainly found in two anticlines that merge at a shallow structural saddle that links the two
anticlines to a single oil accumulation reservoir. The structure setting is based on the 3D seismic
interpretation and calibrated by well data.
Within Bahariya formation, several thin sand bodies (5 – 30 ft of thickness) extend throughout the
entire reservoir. These sand bodies where divided into six layers (BAH-I through BAH-VI), each containing
from one to four primary oil-bearing sand reservoirs. The porosity of these reservoirs averages to 24%, while
their permeability is ranging around 50 – 200 mD. Both BAH-V & BAH-VI were contributing to the production
at the field’s early production days before they got flooded with time by the influx of the natural aquifers that
exist in those two layers. Currently, only three of these layers (BAH-I, III & IV) are contributing to the net field
production. The initial extension of the oil bank within these layers was defined by well logs at the depths of
oil-down-to as no OWC was observed in any of them. Indeed, the reservoir pressure decline trend indicated
that the driving energy within the reservoir is only a depletion one with no indications for the existence of
supporting aquifers. Fig. 1 shows a graph of the field pressure behaviour with time as recorded while drilling
each well within the field;
As seen in Fig. 2, the pressure in both BAH-III & BAH-IV exhibited major reduction within the first six
years that represent the field’s primary production phase. In Mid 1990 and when the reservoir pressure
became close to the bubble point pressure at (470 Psi), the secondary production phase of the field was
initiated by implementing a pressure support project via water injection. Since the reservoir hydrocarbons
were classified from PVT analysis as black oil with an API of 41.5, the sensitivities that were performed to
determine the best method to support the pressure found that water injection should be the best scenario;
indeed, a huge improvement in the pressure decline trend was observed after that. The field’s water injection
strategy and system was subjected to continuous modifications and upgrades ever since.
With a production since 1984 that accumulated to 30 MMSTBO, Meleiha North-East field is
considered one of Agiba’s main assets. Having an initial reservoir pressure of 2300 Psi, the production rate
of a single well back then was capable of reaching about 500 to 1000 BOPD. Nowadays, the average well in
the field can barely sustain a production of 250 BOPD relative to the current average bottom-hole flowing
pressure that is ranging between 200 and 500 Psi. The entire field’s daily production plot since start is shown
in Fig. 3.
The injection scheme at mid 2010 was edge-water-injection that was conducted by four water
injectors confining the main anticline. Due to the continuous reduction of the reservoir pressure that was
associated with a reduction in the field production, the water injection was planned to be improved by
introducing one peripheral water injector (NE-41) at the saddle that joins the two anticlines and by adding
another injector (NE-42) to aid the water front at the reservoir edge. However, and since the water injection
systems of the fields in Meleiha concession are connected and being fed from only three water source wells,
adding extra injectors would require additional water requirements that were unsupportable by Meleiha
injection system at that time. Hence, and to insure an immediate solution to the shortage of water supplies,
the Dumpflooding technique was considered.

Dumpflooding: General Concept

Dumpflooding is a technique developed since the late 60’s to provide a mean of water injection wherever
implementing a typical water injection system becomes physically impossible or uneconomic such as in the
case of remote fields or minor reservoirs with little production. The idea is simply based on using the
pressure differential between the perforated intervals in a single well to drive the water coming from a
relatively high pressure water-bearing zone to a lower-pressure oil-bearing zone(s); i.e. it may be stated that
the main advantage dumpflooding have over any typical injection system is that the former eliminates the
need for transferring injection-fluids to injection wells. Fig. 4 illustrates the basic idea of dumpflooding by a
simplified sketch.
SPE 1646661 3

Dumpflooding: Advantages

As mentioned in the previous section the main advantages of dumpflooding are economical; Dumpflooding
eliminates the need of transferring injection fluids to injectors which in turn saves all the cost and troubles
associated with providing a water source, piping system, booster-pumps, and wellbore pumps and let alone
the cost of maintaining such injection facilities. Also bare in mind that any typical injection surface-facilities
suffer from corrosion and erosion problems which cause leaks that need to be treated periodically and if it is
sever enough it can force the entire injection system to be stopped till contingency actions are taken. As a
personal experience, Agiba suffer from occasion thefts of the pipelines due to the large lengths of our piping
systems. Dumpflooding saves the headaches and cost of all the previous issues.
In addition to the previous, dumpflooding may be the only economically possible option in some
remote areas as it is recommended when the cost of an injection system overcomes the expected gain.
Aside the economics, water-dumpflooding technique can provide an injection rate that is lower than
the minimum rate provided by surface injection as the latter is controlled by the hydrostatic pressure of the
water column from the surface to the target zone; this hydrostatic pressure is mostly higher than the pressure
of water-bearing reservoirs especially in the case of shallow targets (around 5000 ft/SS). In some cases it is
required to limit the injection rates as low as possible to provide better sweep efficiency.

Dumpflooding: Requirements & Limitations

Dumpflooding only requires a relatively high pressure water-bearing zone (Source) to exist along with the
target oil-bearing zone(s). This source zone should be, however, of a significant extension that insures its
capability to sustain its initial water production rates and it also should have good rock properties that insure
fast response to any bottomhole pressure changes. Note that, typically, the water of the source zone must
be compatible with the water existing within the recipient zones. On the other hand, the limitations of
dumpflooding can be summarized in the following points;
 It is difficult to control the downhole injection rates. Smart well completions can provide a mean of
downhole-valves that act as a partial restriction to the flow coming from the source zone. This
provides a way to decrease the pressure differential by altering the downhole injection pressure and
consequently decreasing the downhole injection rates.
 Despite that downhole pumps can be installed to give a pressure boost to the fluids coming from a
source zone to increase the injection rate, the maximum rate will still be limited by the productivity of
the source zone. Hence in some cases, the maximum possible injection rate provided by
dumpflooding cannot satisfy the desired requirements.
 At Fixed conditions, the injection rates would vary with time due to pressure changes. The injection
rates may increase if the pressure of the recipient zone(s) decreased with field production, or it may
decrease if the pressure of the source zone decreased.

Agiba’s First Trial _ (NE-41)

The water injector (NE-41) was drilled in the saddle as planned, the composite log of which that is shown in
Fig. 5, indicated that the well contained all the typical producing reservoirs within the field in addition to a
virgin water-bearing reservoir in layer BAH-VI. The relatively good properties of the target sand bodies and
the large pressure difference between the water-bearing layer (source) and those oil-bearing layers
(recipients) made the well suitable for applying dumpflooding technique. Since that there was a shortage in
the injection water supplies at that time and for the previous reasons, it was decided to dumpflood the well
and to initiate the technique for the first time in Agiba. And so, the well was planned with the completion
showing in Fig. 6. All the recipient zones were perforated along with the source zone. In case if the
dumpflooding project had failed for any reason, a pack up scenario was planned by installing a suspended
hydraulic packer with a tail assembly above the source zone to enable the isolation of the water zone to
apply surface water injection on the target zones alone.
 4 SPE 164661

Monitoring

The general monitoring procedures for a typical dumpflooding project is based on performing PLT’s to check
the cumulative injection rate and its distribution among the recipient zones. After validating the existence of
acceptable injection rates, the effect of which can be monitored on the surrounding producers by the typical
procedures such as monitoring the DFL & production improvements in the surroundings, or by mixing
chemical tracers with the injected water to trace the injected water throughout the reservoir.
Hence, and after completing well NE-41 as planned, a PLT was performed in order to check the
downhole injection performance if any. The first PLT, shown in Fig. 7, showed that the recipient zones
received too little water from the source zone. Since that the bottomhole pressure was recorded to be 2200
Psi indicating that the source zone is contributing with its full energy, the low injection rates were related to a
positive skin mainly in the recipient zones that was initiated during the well drilling or completion phases.
Consequently an acidizing job was planned for the well and another PLT was recorded afterwards; the
results of which are shown in Fig. 8. This time the contribution of the source zone was estimated to be a total
of 1650 BWPD distributed over the four recipient zones according to their injectivity indices and reservoir
pressures. Hence, the project was considered initially successful.
A plan was set to continue monitoring the well’s performance by performing a PLT every 4 months.
Taking the DFL reading during the second PLT as a reference for the optimum performance, monthly DFL
readings were also planned to be recorded to monitor the downhole injection rates; lower DFL’s would reflect
a problem with the source zone in the form of damage or sever reservoir pressure decline, while higher
DFL’s reflect a problem with the recipient zones in the form of highly pressurized near wellbore area or
damage.

Economical Overview

If compared to surface water-injection techniques, dumpflooding saves the cost of providing any surface
facilities. Hence, the capital cost of a dumpflooding project is mainly composed of the drilling and
completion costs of a single well. As for the operational cost, it is represented by the cost of periodic PLT’s
and occasionally workovers whenever it is needed. On the other hand, surface injection systems consume a
significant operational cost for the maintenance of the surface facilities (e.g. pipelines, poster pumps, and
water-treatment plant).
As for Agiba’s case, NE-41, a comparison was made to estimate the amount of money that was
saved by applying dumpflooding instead of surface injection. These estimations include both capital and
operational costs and was estimated relative to the market prices at that time. The results of this study are
tabulated in Tab. 1.

Agiba’s Second Trial _ (NE-42)

Upon the success of NE-41, the technique was planned to be fatherly developed. Since there was an
existing plan to increase the edge-water-drive injection by adding another injector to the existing ones, this
scheduled well was decided to be also a dumpflooding well.
Well NE-42 was drilled shortly after NE-41 and showed good facies that can be seen on its
composite log in Fig. 10. Despite that it was drilled in what was estimated to be the flooded edge of the
reservoir, the facies and pressure of layer BAH-I was one of the best encountered in the field. However, and
since the well was indeed flooded in the lower target zones (BAH-III & BAH-IV) and contained a suitable
source zone (BAH-V), it was decided to complete the well to be semi-producer/semi-dumpflooding by
equipping it with the completion illustrated in Fig. 11. The completion separates BAH-I from the bottom
layers (BAH-III, IV & V) by a mean of hydraulic packer and an FWG plug. The plan was as follows; (1)
perforate the recipient zones BAH-III & IV along with the source zone BAH-V, (2) test the injection
performance by performing a PLT, (3) perform an acidizing job if necessary followed by another PLT, (4)
SPE 1646661 5

isolate the bottom section by installing an FWG plug in the packer, and finally (5) perforate the upper zone,
BAH-I, and put it on production using a sucker rod. Indeed all the previous steps were followed as planned
and the PLT results, shown in Figure-12, indicated good injection parameters after performing the acidizing
job. On the other hand, BAH-I produced around 200 BOPD which is significantly higher than its average
contribution.
NE-42 was considered another success in the field of dumpflooding at Agiba. It was even considered
of a higher beneficial value than NE-41 because of its completion design that permitted both water-
dumpflooding and oil-production. The well is also the only current dual purpose well in Agiba.

Further Possible Modifications

Despite that dumpflooding technology is very old; it has been subjected to several modifications by
combining its basic concept with the modern well completion techniques and smart downhole equipments in
order to optimise the downhole injection performance. Nearly all the modifications on dumpflooding aimed
towards achieving better control on the process as the main disadvantage of dumpflooding is controlling and
monitoring the downhole flow performance.
The following section briefly describes some of the interventions that were introduced to
dumpflooding technology:

Choke-Assisted Dumpflooding. The development of well completions aimed towards providing a mean of
modifying the downhole equipments and completion as desired to meet with the constantly changing
downhole conditions and targets. In addition, smart completions collect, analyzes, and send downhole data
to surface for better monitoring of the well’s performance with time.
Deploying such technology to dumpflooding theory provided a mean of control on the downhole flow
rate to a certain degree. Simply the concept is based on limiting the water production from the source zone
and consequently controlling the injection flow rate into the recipient zones. This is done via surface-
controlled downhole-valves and variable-chokes that provide a partial restriction to the flow rate. Such tools
become very handy when the source zone pressure-decline is much lower than that of the recipient zones,
resulting in a constantly increasing downhole injection rates. In such case, the completion should be
equipped with gauges that constantly report the downhole pressure and temperature to work as a guide for
determining the injection flow rates and consequently modifying a downhole chock to initiate or modify a
partial restriction to flow in order to alternate the injection rates as desired. Such completions must first
undergo sensitivity studies to determine the approximate flow rate at different chock/valve positions. A chart
of choke positions versus injection rates is then constructed for each specific dumpflooding well. However,
Agiba did not find such technology to be necessary for its dumpflooding wells as already the estimated
maximum downhole flow rate in each well barely met with the desired rate relative to the withdrawal ratio of
the surrounding producers.

ESP-Assisted Dumpflooding. The idea was developed to handle situations that are opposite to the above
mentioned case of having injection rates higher than the desired ones. ESP-assisted dumpflooding systems
install a downhole pump that provide a pressure boost to the water flow from the source zone and
consequently increase the pressure differential to initiate higher injection rates. Similar to chock-restricted
systems, ESP-assisted systems uses smart well completions to collect and send real time downhole-data to
surface in order to optimise the ESP parameters with time to give the desired injection rates. Sensitivities are
performed to generate specific charts of ESP parameters versus downhole injection rates for each specific
dumpflooding well. Such systems are preferably to be equipped with a mean of sand control to protect the
ESP from any fines production coming from the source zone. Note that the pump can be installed inverted if
the source zone is above the recipient zones.
 6 SPE 164661

Gas Dumpflooding. The same concept used in water-dumpflooding, to permit the water cross-flow from a
pressurized water zone into a lower-pressure oil reservoir(s), can also be deployed to gas-dumpflooding.
The idea is based on allowing the cross-flow of natural gas from a pressurized gas-bearing layer to an oil-
bearing zone with relatively lower reservoir pressure. Similarly to water-dumpfloods, the injected gas must be
compatible with the properties of the recipient zone(s). The extension of the gas-source zone must be
significant to insure a stable injection pressure with time. Similar to typical gas injection systems, gas-
dumpfloods are preferred to be in the reservoir crest unless the sensitivities studies showed otherwise.
Downhole smart equipments and pumps can be used to control the downhole injection rates with time.
The economical advantage gas-dumpflooding provides compared to gas surface-injection systems
even overcomes the economical advantage water-dumpflooding has over water surface-injection systems.
This is because the capital cost of gas surface-injection greatly overcomes the cost of water surface-injection
while the cost is almost the same for both gas-dumpflooding and water-dumpflooding systems.

Conclusions

 Dumpflooding (gas/water) saves the cost, the troubles, and the facilities required for transferring
injection fluids to injection wells.
 In remote areas, dumpflooding is supposed to be the optimum injection technique as it eliminates the
need for providing a fluid source.
 Before selecting a source zone in a dumpflooding well, it must be validated that both the storativity
and the productivity of that zone would ensure continuous, long lasting pressure support with
suitable rates.
 The injection rates in dumpflooding are not controllable naturally; the properties of both the source
and the receiving zones will determine the injection rate relative to the existing pressure differential
between the zones and this will typically vary with time. However, intelligent completions and
downhole pumps can be used to modify the rates as desired.
 Dumpflooding technique should not be applied before validating if the anticipated injection rate would
sufficiently support the reservoir pressure.
 To be able to stop the injection at any time, the well must be equipped with a selective completion
that permits the separation of the source zone from the receiving zones whenever it is desired. To
save unnecessary cost, use packer/tail-string assembly instead of a full production string.
 Periodic PLT’s and DFL measurements are necessary for evaluating the injection performance with
time.

References

1. C. A. Davies: “The Theory and Practice of Monitoring and Controlling Dumpfloods” Paper SPE-3733 presented at European
Spring Meeting, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, May 16-18, 1972.
2. Hii Lu Kuoh and Michael Kang: “A Coiled-Tubing-Deployed Intelligent ESP Dumpflood System” Paper SPE-95170 presented
at the SPE ESP Workshop held in Woodlands, Texas, USA, from 29th of April to 1st of May 2009.
3. J. Rawding: “Application of Intelligent Well Completion for Controlled Dumpflood in West Kuwait” Paper SPE-112243
presented at the SPE Intelligent Energy Conference and Exhibition held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 25-27 February, 2008.
4. R. Quttainah and E. Al-Maraghi: “Umm Gudair Production Plateau Extension, the Applicability of FullField Dumpflood
Injection to Maintain Reservoir Pressure and Extend Production Plateau” Paper SPE-97624 presented at the SPE International
Improved Oil Recovery Conference held in Kuala, Malaysia, 5-6 December, 2005.
SPE 1646661 7

APPENDIX

TABLE 1: The typical minimum cost of initiating a conventional water

injection project compared to that of initiating a dumpflooding project.
Prices base on the Egyptian market at 2013.

Capital Requirements Average Cost

Water Source Well
1,100,000
(drilling + completion)

Electrical Submersible Pump (for the

300,000
W.S.W.)

Power Source (generator) 40,000

Completion String (for the W.I.W.) 80,000

1 Kilometer Pipline System

400,000
(1 meter of 4" pipe = 100 $)

Total Capital Cost [$]

1,920,000

Annual Operational Annual Cost

Requirements

Power Consumption of the ESP (400 liters

of diesel per day; 1 Liter = 0.86 $)
128,000

Tubing Leaks (1 workover per year for the

W.I.W)

ESP Maintenance (1 workover per year for

100,000
the W.S.W)

Total Annual Cost [$/Year]

288,000

Others

Additives (corrosion inhibitors, scale inhibitors, and biocides)

Maintenance of Surface Facilities (leaks, corrosion, and

wear)

Manpower
8 SPE 164661

Down Time
 SPE 1646661 9

Figure 1: Structural Depth Map of M.NE Field

Starting W.I.

Figure 2: Reservoir Pressure Behavior of M.NE Field

Figure 4: Daily Production Rate, Oil & Liquid, of M.NE Field

Figure 3: A Representation of
Dumpflooding Technique
 10 SPE 164661

Section II
Section I Section III

Figure 5: The Composite Log of Well NE-41

Showing the Section of Bahariya Formation

BAH-I

BAH-III

BAH-IV

BAH-VI

Figure 6: Completion Sketch of

NE-41

Figure 7: First PLT for NE-41

 SPE 1646661 11

B-V

Figure 8: Second Recorded PLT for NE-41

Figure 9: Composite Log of NE-42 Showing the Section of
Bahriya Formation

Figure 10: Completion

Sketch of NE-42 Figure 12: Recorded PLT of NE-42