Integrated Water Management Challenges

Abstract

Abstract As reservoirs mature, producing more oil out of maturing reservoirs entails more water production. For maturing reservoirs, it is, therefore, essential for a successful water management process to be introduced – one that can handle substantial volumes of water produced and result in increased oil production. Water management was not a major concern for Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) in the past. Most of its crude oil production were from Greater Burgan and other oil fields which were producing mostly dry, easy crude with little water production. With the ageing of Kuwait's oil fields, KOC is now experiencing an increase in water production from its maturing reservoirs. This increase is caused by both planned development and field maturity. Water production impacts the economics of oil field exploitation in number of areas like production volume, corrosions, crude quality, disposal, separation and metering. The accurate prediction of future water production trends is one of the most challenging tasks for KOC. A holistic approach to water management requires working out optimized development plan, enhanced oil recovery requirements, improving sweep efficiency, assessment of future total water injection and disposal needs, and surface handling facility requirements for both oil and water. Focused multilevel surveillance program, real time data gathering, tracking of water front movement, use of analytical models are part of several techniques used for water injection monitoring techniques to improve water flood conformance in KOC reservoirs. KOC is currently working an integrated water management plan to improve the overall performance of its reservoirs and establish synergy between different assets to utilize all its resources optimally.