A New Approach for Injection Water Quality

Abstract

Abstract With increasingly strong environmental concerns in the disposal of produced water onshore and offshore, it has become even more important to have a better understanding of the water injection processes both technically and economically. No reliable models are currently available to predict injection water quality requirements. This paper discusses a new comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach for establishing injection water quality guidelines by correlation and interpretation of actual field water quality, injection well surveys, and injection data (injection rates and pressures), A decision tree approach to facilitate interpretation of the data for design purposes is discussed. Field data from two existing waterflood systems was gathered and evaluated to illustrate the decision tree approach. The new interdisciplinary approach has potential applications for existing systems to give a meaningful economic evaluation of water quality needs and for establishing more realistic water quality specifications for new systems.