IMMISCIBLE

DISPLACEMENT:
WATERFLOODING

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 LESSON OUTCOMES
• At the end of this lesson, students should be able to
• Describe different displacement mechanism concepts
• Apply frontal advance formula to estimate the rate at
which injected water moves through the reservoir

CO - Apply water influx, different displacement mechanism

concepts and decline curve analysis for reserve
estimations.

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 TOPIC OUTLINE
• Introduction and definition
• Why we need water injection
• What to consider in waterflooding
• Important rock-fluid characteristics in
displacement process
• Displacement theory: Buckley-Leverett
• Calculation of oil recovery: Welge Analysis

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 INTRODUCTION
• Drive mechanisms are means of providing
energy to move hydrocarbon from reservoirs

• There are drive mechanisms that involve the

immiscible displacement of oil

• “Immiscible displacement” means that there is

no mixing of injected and displaced phases at
the pore level (through mass transfer of
components)
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 CONT’D.
• Natural water drive gives highest recovery factor
therefore water drive by injection is the most
common method of secondary recovery

• Nowadays, water drive system is modelled using

numerical reservoir simulation to understand its
displacement behaviour and the recovery of oil

• We want to understand the important properties

and analytical techniques used to predict
behaviour of immiscible displacement process

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 DEFINITION
• Waterflooding (www.slb.com)
A method of secondary recovery in which water is
injected into the reservoir formation to displace residual
oil. The water from injection wells physically sweeps the
displaced oil to adjacent production wells.

• Water injection (www.wikipedia.com)

A method used in oil production is where water is injected
back into the reservoir usually to increase pressure and
thereby stimulate production. This method is used to
increase oil recovery from an existing reservoir.
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 CONT’D
• Water is injected for two
reasons:
1. For pressure support of
the reservoir (also known
as voidage
replacement)
 water injection

2. To sweep or displace
the oil from the reservoir,
and push it towards an
oil production well.
 waterflooding
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 WHY WE NEED WATER
INJECTION
• Isolated Zones
• In some cases, an active reservoir-aquifer systems may
have faulting structure within the reservoir structure,
which causes some hydrocarbon zones to be isolated
from aquifer pressure support

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 CONT’D
• Permeability
• In producing fields that has moderate to high permeabilities,
maintaining the high productivity is important. This is done
through pressure maintenance using water injection

𝑑𝑝 𝑞𝜇
=
𝑑𝑟 𝑘𝐴

• Undersaturated reservoir
• If a reservoir is above its bubble point (undersaturated), then
if there is no pressure support from an aquifer, the reservoir
pressure will decline rapidly

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 WHAT TO CONSIDER IN
WATERFLOODING

• To determine the suitability of a candidate

reservoir for waterflooding, these reservoir
characteristics must be considered:
• Reservoir geometry
• Fluid properties
• Reservoir depth
• Lithology and rock properties
• Fluid saturations
• Reservoir uniformity and pay continuity
• Primary reservoir driving mechanisms

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 CONT’D
• Reservoir geometry
• The areal geometry of reservoir influence the location
and number of wells/platforms
• An analysis of reservoir geometry and past reservoir
performance is often important when defining the
presence and strength of a natural water drive and,
thus, when defining the need to supplement the
natural drive.
• Lithology and rock properties
• Clay content – presence of clay mineral may or may
not clog pores during waterflood
• Thin, low perm reservoir – water injection pressure may
exceed fracture pressure

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 CONT’D
• Fluid properties
• In microscopic level, relatively low oil viscosity is preferable
for waterflood i.e. water viscosity higher than oil viscosity
• Water cannot move faster than oil, so water displaces oil in
piston-like manner

injection production
water oil

M<1 Stable displacement

• If relatively high oil viscosity (low water viscosity), water
moves faster than oil, causing water to fingers through the
oil
• This is undesirable
M>1

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 CONT’D
• Reservoir depth
• Influence both technical and economical aspect of
waterflood
• Maximum injection pressure increases with depth
• Therefore if very deep wells, costs of lifting oil is very high
so reduce ultimate recovery factor i.e. it is not feasible to
inject water
• On the other hand, shallow reservoir has limit on injection
pressure i.e. it must be less than formation fracture
pressure
• A critical pressure approximately 1psi/ft of depth. If
exceeded, permits the injected water to expand
openings along fractures or to create fractures which will
result in the channelling of the injected water.

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 CONT’D
• Fluid saturations
• High oil saturation provides sufficient supply of recoverable
oil
• Oil mobility is high hence give higher recovery efficiency

• Reservoir uniformity and pay continuity

• A ‘physically’ uniform reservoir and a continuous pay zone
is much preferable
• If there are ‘thief zones’ – limited thickness layers of high
permeability zone, this could cause bypassing of oil

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 CONT’D
• Primary drive mechanisms
• Water drive reservoirs
• Good candidate because of natural ongoing water influx
• Solution gas-drive reservoirs
• Also considered good candidate because the primary
recovery will usually be low and therefore potential exists
for additional recovery by water injection
• Gas-cap reservoirs
• Not normally a good candidate because primary
recovery may already be efficient without water injection
• But some cases may need water injection if the effective
gas-cap drive is not functioning
• Volumetric undersaturated-oil reservoirs
• To produce above the bubble-point pressure

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 IMPORTANT ROCK-FLUID
CHARACTERISTICS IN DISPLACEMENT
PROCESS
• Four important characteristics of reservoir rock-
fluid system which controls the efficiency of
waterflooding

• Wettability
• Capillary pressure
• Relative permeability
• Mobility ratio

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 1. WETTABILITY
• Tendency of one fluid to adhere to a solid surface
in the presence of other immiscible fluids

• Water displacing oil in water-wet reservoir -

Imbibition
• Imbibition – flow process in which the saturation of the
wetting phase (water) increases and the non-wetting
phase saturation decreases.
• Mobility of wetting phase increases
• Water displacing oil in oil-wet reservoir - Drainage
• Drainage - flow process in which the saturation of the non-
wetting phase increases
• Mobility of non-wetting fluid phase increases

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 Air
OIL Oil OIL



 WATER  WATER
 < 90
WATER WATER  > 90
SOLID (ROCK) SOLID (ROCK)
FREE WATER

OIL
GRAIN GRAIN

OIL
RIM
BOUND WATER FREE WATER
Ayers, 2001
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 Leverson, 1967

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 2. CAPILLARY PRESSURE
• The pressure difference between non-wetting
phase and wetting phase caused by interfacial
tension and curved surface when two immiscible
fluids are in contact with each other

Pc = Pnw - Pw

• Capillary pressure is a function of surface

tension/IFT, pore size/geometry and wettability

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 3. RELATIVE PERMEABILITY
• When a wetting and non-wetting phase flow
together, the relative permeability of each
phase (at a specific saturation) is the ratio of the
effective permeability of the phase to the
absolute permeability (of the rock)

Relative permeability to fluid = Effective permeability of the fluid

Absolute permeability of the rock

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 4. MOBILITY RATIO
• Mobility, k/µ, is defined as effective permeability
of a fluid divided by its viscosity
• Mobility ratio, M, is defined as mobility of the
displacing phase divided by the mobility of the
displaced phase.
• In waterflooding,

Mobility Ratio = Water mobility = kw/µw

Oil mobility ko/µo

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 Viscous
fingering

Source: http://baervan.nmt.edu/research_groups/reservoir_sweep_improvement/pages/clean_up/mobility.html

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 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ROCK-
FLUID CHARACTERISTICS
• The analysis of waterflooding displacement
must use the appropriate capillary pressure
curves and relative permeabilities data
measured under water-wet or oil-wet
imbibition or drainage conditions

• Must understand the interconnection between

these characteristics in order to understand
and analyse the displacement process

• Oil moves easier in water-wet rock, thus

recovery from waterflooding for water-wet
reservoir is greater

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 DISPLACEMENT THEORY:
BUCKLEY-LEVERETT
• Displacement Efficiency
• The Overall Recovery Factor (Efficiency), RF of any
secondary/ tertiary recovery method is defined as
RF = ED x EV =ED x EA x EI
where ED = Displacement efficiency
EA = Areal sweep efficiency
EI = Vertical sweep efficiency
EV= Volumetric sweep efficiency

• The displacement efficiency, ED is the fraction of movable oil

that has been displaced from the swept zone at any given
time or at any given pore volume injected

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 EXAMPLE ON
DISPLACEMENT EFFICIENCY

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 CONT’D
• The displacement efficiency will continually increase at
different stages of waterflood (i.e. with increasing
average water saturation)
In the sweept area

Average oil
saturation
In the flooded
zone

Increasing Sw Increasing ED

• But how to relate displacement efficiency with

water injection? How to determine the increase
in average water saturation as a function of
cumulative water injected or injected time?

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 EXAMPLE ON VOLUMETRIC
SWEEP EFFICIENCY

• Calculate EV.

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 Or,
Since EV = EI x EA

EI EA
where,

EI =

EA=

What will be the value of EA at or after breakthrough?

What is the value of EI in a single layer?

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 BUCKLEY-LEVERETT THEORY
• In 1942, Buckley and Leverett developed (the
simplest and most widely used) displacement theory
to describe the relationship between water
saturation and amount of water injection
dx iw df w
vSw  
dt Sw A dS w Sw

• It estimate the rate at which water injected moves

through the reservoir
• Sometimes known as Buckley-Leverett Equation (BL)
• Assumptions
• Linear, one dimensional flow
• Two-phase, Immiscible, Incompressible fluids
• Water displace oil in Water-wet reservoir
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 CONT’D
• Theory consists of two parts:
• Fractional flow equation
• Frontal advance equation
• Fractional flow equation
• To determine the water cut (fraction of total flow
which is water) at any point in the reservoir, given
the water saturation
• Frontal advance equation
• To determine the water saturation profile in reservoir
at any given time during water injection/waterflood

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 FRACTIONAL FLOW
EQUATION
• For two immiscible fluids, oil and water, the fractional
flow of water, fw is defined as the water flow rate
divided by the total flow rate
kk ro A  Pc g sin  
1   
qw qt  o  x 1.0133 x10  6 
fw  
qw  qo k 
1  ro w
k rw  o
• If dip angle and capillary pressure effects are
neglected, the equation becomes
1
fw 
μ k
1  w ro
μ o k rw
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 EXAMPLE FW VS. SW CURVE
 We can plot fractional flow values at specific water saturation
values to get fw vs. Sw curve

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 FRONTAL ADVANCE
EQUATION
• This equation determines the velocity of a plane of
constant water saturation moving through a linear
system (e.g. a core)

dx iw df w
vSw  
dt Sw A dS w Sw

• Velocity of Sw is directly proportional to slope of fw vs. Sw curve

• The equation can also calculate Sw as a function of
time and distance (Saturation Profile)

iwt  df w 
x Sw   
A  dS w  Sw
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 EXAMPLE SW PROFILE

Tarek Ahmad, 2006

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 IMPACT OF VISCOSITY ON
FW AND VSW
 Case 1: Viscous oil
• Viscosity of oil is considerably
greater than injected water

• Fractional flow curve has

concave downward shape

• Velocity of saturation is maximum

at Swi (lowest Sw) and is minimum
at 1-Sor (highest Sw)

Remember: Velocity of Sw is directly proportional to slope fw/Sw!

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 CONT’D
• Case 2: Very light oil
• Oil has low relative viscosity

• Fractional flow curve has

concave upward shape

• Velocity of saturation is maximum

at 1-Sor (highest Sw) and minimum
at Swi (highest Sw)

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 CONT’D
• Case 3: Medium-viscosity oil

• Fractional flow curve is an

S-shape; slope of fw increases
before decreases

• Velocity of saturation is maximum

at shock front but minimum both
at Swi and 1-Sor

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 COMBINED FW CURVE
• Case A: Viscous oil
• Unstable displacement resulting in
by-passing of oil and consequently
premature water breakthrough (BT)
• Oil recovery at BT is very small and
many more pore volumes of water
have to be injected to recover all
movable oil

• Case B: Medium viscous

• Displacement is stable due to
viscosity ratio in an order of
magnitude lower than Case A
• Oil recovery after BT is determined
as a function of cumulative injected
water and time
• Case C: Low viscosity oil
• Piston-like displacement
• Oil recovery at BT is the total
movable oil, 1-Sor - Swc

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 IMPACT OF VISCOSITY ON SW
PROFILE
• Case 1: Viscous oil
• Unstable displacement, early water breakthrough
• Water breakthrough at low Sw

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 CONT’D
• Case 2: Very light oil
• Stable displacement, produce water-free oil until shock
front arrives at producer

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 CONT’D
• Case 3: Medium viscosity oil
• Water-free oil is produced until breakthrough at Swf
• Sw then increases until reach 1-Sor

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 Tarek Ahmad, 2006

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 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PC, KR AND FW

• At A, well produce only oil

since Sw only 10%. Thus
relative permeability to water
is 0. The water cut is also 0.

• At B, well produce both oil &

water since Sw 45%. Relative
permeability to water
increases. Water cut 50%

• At C, well produce water.

Relative permeability to water
highest. Water cut 100%.

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 CALCULATION OF OIL
RECOVERY: WELGE
ANALYSIS
• In 1952, Welge developed a method with
objective to determine oil recovery

• The method estimates average water

saturation before and after breakthrough,
which is then used to calculate oil
recovery and other production values

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 WELGE’S GRAPHICAL
METHOD
Tangent or
slope of fw curve
Point of tangent crosses fw =1

Point of Swi Average Sw

(or Swc) behind front at BT

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 STEPS TO CALCULATE OIL
RECOVERY
• Data preparation
• Fractional flow curve

• Calculate oil recovery before/at breakthrough

• Cumulative water injected = cumulative oil recovery

• Calculate oil recovery after breakthrough

• Cumulative water injected =cumulative oil recovery +
water production

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• Ns = Initial oil in place at
start of flood (STB)
•Bo = oil formation
volume factor (bbl/STB)
•Bw = water formation
volume factor (bbl/STB)
•iw = water injection rate
(bbl/day)
•PV = Pore volume (bbl)
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INPUT AND OUTPUT OF
DISPLACEMENT PROCESS
•ED = Displacement efficiency
•t = time water BT/water injected
•Np = Cumulative oil production (STB)
•Winj = cumulative water injected
(STB)
•Wp = Cumulative water production
(STB)
•WORs = Surface water-oil ratio
•SwBT = avg Sw behind (STB/STB)
front at BT
•Qo = Oil production rate (STB/day)
•Swe = avg Sw at
producing end of block •Qw = Water production rate (STB/day)
•dfw/dSw = derivative of •RF = Recovery factor
fw curve at Sw • Qi = Cumulative pore volumes of
water injected
 FORMULAE
• Oil recovery at breakthrough
• Can be expressed in terms of bbl or STB or pore volume
(PV) i.e. fraction
N pdBT  QidBT ( PV )
where
N pBT  N s E D (bbl )
where
QidBT 
1
df w

 S wBT  S wi 
S wBT  S wi dS w
ED 
Swf

1  S wi WiBT  PV  QidBT (bbl )

N pdBT  ( S wBT  S wi )( PV )
WiBT
t BT  (days )
iw
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 CONT’D
• Oil recovery after breakthrough
N p  N s E D (bbl ) N pd  Qid ( PV )
where where

ED 
S w 2  S wi Qid 
1
df w

 S w 2  S wi 
1  S wi
dS w Sw 2
N pd  ( S w 2  S wi ) (PV) or Wi  PV  Qid (bbl )

N pd  S w 2  S wi 
1  f w2 
( PV )
df w Wi
t (days)
dS w iw
Sw 2
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 DETERMINATION OF AVG
SW AFTER BT

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 EXAMPLE 1
• The following data are available for a linear-reservoir
system:

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 Step 1: Determine Swf and average SwBT
SOLUTION

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 SOLUTION CONT’D
Step 2: calculate the saturation distribution using the
buckley-leveret equation:

iwt  df w 
x Sw   
A  dS w  Sw

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 EXAMPLE 2
Using the data in Example 1 calculate
a. Total pore volumes of water injected at breakthrough
b. Cumulative water injected at breakthrough
c. Time to breakthrough

solution
a. Swf and the average saturation behind the front (avg_SwBT)
are determined in Example 1 as
Swf=0.596 and avg_SwBT=0.707. thus, using the following
equation gives
QidBT 
1
df w

 S wBT  S wi 
dS w Swf

QidBT=0.707-0.2=0.507 porevolumes

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 CONT’D
b. The cumulative water injected at breakthrough can be
determined using

WiBT  PV  QidBT (bbl )

Where,
PV=Volume*porosity=(A*L*ϕ)/5.615=(26400*600*0.25)/5.615
=705253.7845 bbl
WiBT= 705253.7845*0.507=357563.669 bbl

c. t BT =?
WiBT
from t BT 
iw

t BT =357563.669 bbl/900 bbl/day=397.293 days

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 IMMISCIBLE GAS
INJECTION
a brief introduction

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 IMMISCIBLE GAS
INJECTION
• Gas injection process can either be immiscible or
miscible
• Miscible only when reach a certain very high pressure
called Minimum Miscibility Pressure (MMP)

Oil-Gas
Immiscible
initially

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 CONT’D
Oil-Gas begins to Oil-Gas Miscible at very
become miscible high pressure (MMP)

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 CONT’D
• Methods presented in waterflooding can be
applied in the immiscible gas injection process

• However, the impact of mobility ratio,

permeability variation and gravity is much more
significant in a gas-oil system since the viscosity
and density difference between oil and gas is
very much larger

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 EXAMPLE OF FG CURVE

• Reducing the velocity of

gas injection rate results in
a more favourable
displacement

• fg is the pseudo fractional

flow for gas

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 THE END

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