Abstract
Excessive water production has been a problem in the oil industry for many years. To handle this problem, many research projects have focused on developing conformance control systems. Conformance fracturing, a combination of hydraulic fracturing and water control, has proven to be an effective conformance control technique. Hydraulic fracturing is now the technology of choice for increasing well productivity. The chemistry of relative permeability modifiers has also undergone extensive change; the most notable result of which has been to prolong the life of water control treatments using relative permeability modifier (RPM) polymers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the application of barrier-fracturing using streamline simulation. Barrier-fracturing is a novel idea that involves modifying the flow profile and diverting the displacing fluid by placing a fracture with essentially zero permeability deep into the reservoir. There are many ways to create a zero permeability fracture, examples of which include injection of cement or a conformance fluid into the fracture. In our study, we created several streamline simulation models to show the fidelity and validity of this innovative idea. The streamline simulation models that are presented in this paper range from a simple homogeneous reservoir to a very heterogeneous reservoir. The effect of different barrier-fracture lengths on the reservoir performance was analyzed. We also built streamline models for conventional mechanical and chemical water shutoff techniques (e.g. re-completion and RPM) to compare them with the novel barrier-fracture water shutoff technique. The resulting saturation distribution maps from the longer barrier-fracture clearly show the power of a barrier-fracture to modify flow profile and divert the displacing fluid in comparison to conventional water shutoff techniques. Barrier-fractures helped improve oil recovery by delaying water-breakthrough and eventually improving the volumetric sweep efficiency.
Highlights
Conformance control refers to any solution designed to enhance the injection/production profile of a well by controlling the production of unwanted fluid
The streamline simulation models that are presented in this paper range from a simple homogeneous reservoir to a very heterogeneous reservoir
The streamline simulation models range from a simple homogeneous reservoir to a heterogeneous reservoir with naturally fractured reservoirs (NFR)
Summary
Conformance control refers to any solution designed to enhance the injection/production profile of a well by controlling the production of unwanted fluid. Injection of huge quantities of polymer near wellbore results in decreasing the drive fluid throughput and reservoir pressure support To avoid such issues and divert flow into lower permeability, unswept zones to mobilize bypassed oil, different conformance treatments have been proposed to form a block deep into the thief zone. This powerful aspect of streamlines visualization, with the help of the quantitative flow indicators, can assist in identifying fluid loss to wells outside a pattern and balancing different patterns using well allocation factors (WAF) between injectors and producers. Most recent advances allow for compositional and thermal displacements
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