A modified water injection technique to improve oil recovery : mishrif carbonate reservoirs in Southern Iraq oil fields, case study

Abstract EN

A modified water injection technique has organized by this study to improve oil recovery of the Mishrif reservoirs using polymerized alkaline surfactant water (PAS-Water) injection.

It is planned to modify the existing water injection technology, first to control and balance the hazardous troublemaker reservoir facies of fifty-micron pore sizes with over 500 millidarcies permeability, along with the non-troublemaker types of less than twenty micron pore sizes with 45 to 100 millidarcies permeability.

Second to control Mishrif reservoirs rock-wettability.

Special core analysis under reservoir conditions of 2250 psi and 90 °C has carried out on tens of standard core plugs with heterogeneous buildup, using the proposed renewal water flooding mechanism.

The technique assures early PAS-water injection to delay the water-breakthrough from 0.045 – 0.151 pore volumes water injected with 8 – 25% oil recovery, into 0.15 – 0.268 pore volumes water injected with 18 to 32% improved oil recovery.

As well as, crude oil-in-water divertor injection after breakthrough, within 0.3 to oil0.65 – 0.85-pore volume of water injected to decrease water cut 1 four 0 to 15%.

The overall progress of the PAS-water injection has achieved residual oil mobility of 65%, and upgraded the 35 – 50% oil recovery range by less than three pore volume water injected with 20 – 60% water cut, compared with the same oil recovery range by more than ten pore volume water injected with around 70% water cut.

The ultimate oil recovery improved by this technique is from 70% via more than 20 pore volume water injected with over 95% water cut by usual water injection, to 85 – 90% via 6.4 pore volume water injected with over 90% water cut by the modified water injection.

The technique succeeded to lower the end-point mobility ratio to 1.5 from above five by usual water injection.

It is highly recommended to use ten micron mesh filter at the main injection site and four or five micron mesh filter at the injector sites; to avoid more than 80% of the suspended particles and save as much as possible the overall reservoir facies from permeability damage.