Low Salinity Fines-Assisted Water-flood: Analytical Modelling and Reservoir Simulation

Abstract

Abstract We discuss the fines-assisted case of low salinity water flooding, where the incremental recovery is achieved by induced fines migration, the straining decelerates the injected water with the consequent increase of sweep efficiency on micro and macro scales. The two layers cake reservoir with contrast permeability is discussed. The main idea is displacing of oil by slug of low salinity water with high salinity drive. The displacement occurs first from the highly permeable layer with it's plugging by released fines with the following displacement from low permeable layer by water drive. In this case, no formation damage is induced in low permeable homogenous layer, avoiding the oil production decrease due to induced permeability damage in the low permeable layer. The sensitivity study of with respect to the slug size is performed. We show the competitive effects of fines migration on sweep enhancement and on oil production deceleration. The minimum slug size for low salinity water providing higher recovery if compared with normal water-flood has been found.