An Integrated Methodology for Water Management Under Operational Restrictions

Abstract

Abstract The current concern with the increasing amounts of produced water and the wide variety of operations in which water takes place require considering strategies that, with their further development and implementation, lead to a correct management of the produced and injected water in order to increase the oilfield productivity. Thus, it is possible to determine operation conditions regarding the settings that allow optimizing the oil recovery and the economic incomes of an oil E&P development. It is known that efficient strategies for water management can lead to an effective control of the influence of water on the project development, increasing the economic performance of oil production by means of the reduction of costs and/or the increase of revenues in the cash flow. Examples of this situation are the anticipation of the oil production, the reduction of the treated volumes of water in the field and their respective costs, besides the increase in final oil recovery. Hence, the determination of limits for the water production and injection, the dimensioning of surface facilities and the selection of the proper options for water management shall be based on the economic parameters and production performance, since the handling of an eventual extremely high water production, or an injection not agreed with the necessities of the field and the processing capacity, can affect negatively both, the cash flow and the final oil recovery. Also, it is important to highlight that the strategy selected for water management must consider environmental actions not only to minimize the negative effects of water processes, but also because those actions can be accounted for into the cash flow and in the field operation as intangible goods. This paper presents a brief review on the main aspects of the water management and proposes a methodology which integrates different factors involved in water management to determine the appropriate conditions for its implementation, considering technical and economic factors. The study presents as main benefit the possibility of an integrated solution in order to get a bigger performance of the processes that involve the use of water in oil field operations.