Design and Implementation of the First Polymer Flooding Project in Colombia: Yariguí-Cantagallo Field

Abstract

Abstract Waterflooding is one of the oil recovery processes best known and applied worldwide. However, this method has limited efficiency to displace oil. That is why the implementations of chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (CEOR) processes is necessary, with the objective of increasing both volumetric and displacement efficiencies and maximize the recovery factor, even at the early stages of waterflooding. The first Polymer flooding Project of ECOPETROL S.A. spent 18 months designing and assuring the stages of screening, area selection, experimental feasibility, numerical simulation, infrastructure, financial analysis, automation, execution and online monitoring of a polymer flooding EOR pilot in the Yariguí-Cantagallo field. Strategically, the pilot has two injection patterns operated by two different globally recognized services companies. The first injection pattern started on 17 March 2014 with an injection rate of 1,000 BPD and a polymer concentration of 1,500 ppm in YR-504 injection well. The second injection pattern began on 27 April 2014 with the same injection rate and a polymer concentration of 800 ppm in YR-510 injector. The first seventeen months of polymer injection have allowed the assimilation of learned lessons, best practices for continual improvement in the operation of such processes, incremental oil production; water cut reduction and increases in the fluid levels for the first row of offset producers. The development of the first polymer flooding pilot in Colombia by Ecopetrol broadens the expectations for expansion in the field and implementing this type of technology to other Colombian oil fields, and has become one player to leverage the achievement of production goals of the business group. This work presents the implemented procedure during design, execution and initial monitoring of the polymer flooding project, which is the first project of its kind carried out in Colombia by Ecopetrol and can be considered successful at a cost per incremental barrel of $US 4.60.