Studies Of Effluent Water Quality For The Enhancement Of Oil Recovery In North Kuwait

Abstract

Abstract The future plan for North Kuwait oil fields is to produce 900,000 bpd by the year 2013/2014. To meet this target, it is necessary to inject up to 1.5 million barrels of water per day (bwpd). The future plan is to inject 500,000 bwpd of treated sea water with the balance from produced water re-injection. However, if water flooding is not implemented, significant amounts of oil would be left in-place, and the current plan could not be achieved. Dispersed oil in produced water is detrimental for several reasons. First, bacteria utilize certain components in the crude oil as food. Second, oil is strongly adsorbed on iron sulfides and other scale deposits, which makes it difficult to remove these deposits with acid treatments. Third, oil reduces the relative permeability to water in the injection well. As relative permeability to water decreases, it requires more pressure to inject the same amount of oil free water. Dispersed oil in the injected water can be reduced by proper selection of water treatment equipment, this equipment selection dependant on this study results. One of the main objectives of this study is to perform a system audit of effluent water specifications from gathering centers (GCs) in one of the Kuwait oil field. This would involve the collecting and analysing the effluent water samples from various points in each gathering center (GC) and evaluate the water quality and its suitability for re-injection to enhance the recovery of oil.