Low Salinity Flooding Trial at West Salym Field

Abstract

Abstract Low-salinity waterflooding (LSF) has been recognized as an IOR/EOR technique for both green and brown fields in which the salinity of the injected water is lowered for particular reservoir properties to improve oil recovery. While providing lower or similar UTC's low salinity projects have the advantage of lower capital and operational costs as compared to some more expensive EOR alternatives. This work describes LSF experiments, field-scale simulation results, and conceptual design of surface facilities for West Salym oil field. The field is located in West Siberia and is on stream since 2004. Conventional waterflooding was started in 2005 and current water cut is currently above 80% in the developed area of the field. To counter oil production decline a tertiary Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer (ASP) flooding technique selected for mature waterflooded field parts and piloting of this technique is ongoing. Operationally simpler and more cost-effective LSF method is considered for implementation in the unflushed (green) areas of the field since it has been recognized that application of LSF in secondary mode results in better incremental oil recovery than LSF in tertiary mode. The results of a comprehensive conceptual study performed to justify the LSF trial are presented in this paper. To generate production forecast for LSF in the isolated area at the outset of reservoir development the results of laboratory core tests executed at different salinities presented earlier (Suijkerbuijk et al., 2014) have been used. Dynamic reservoir modelling using low-salinity relative permeability curves showed that injection of low-salinity water leads to incremental oil production up to 2.5% of STOIIP. These results establish the fundamentals for a LSF field trial. A concept of surface facilities design for LSF trial area at West Salym oil field is also presented in the paper. Differently to other LSF projects it is proposed to prepare low-salinity water with required properties by mixing fresh water from aquifer and high salinity water from produced water reinjection (PWRI) system. In such a case LSF facilities concept does not require expensive water treatment techniques which significantly reduces the project capital and operational costs.