Evaluation of Optimal Designs for Infill Well Drilling for Water Flood Systems

Evaluation of Optimal Designs for Infill Well Drilling for Water Flood Systems.

ABSTRACT

One of the ways of maximizing recovery from a reservoir is by drilling infill wells. Infill well placement is challenging because many well scenarios must be evaluated when undertaking the optimization program and very often, the variables that affect reservoir performance are nonlinearly correlated with some degree of uncertainty.

Resultantly, the use of stochastic search algorithms has gained wide acceptance in solving problems associated with well placement.

This research seeks to analyze the efficiency of the flood patterns as published by Crawford and to ascertain the efficiency of the peripheral pattern which is not available in literature. Also employed is an efficient optimization tool to solve the well placement problem by identifying the optimum locations for the infill wells.

Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm (PSA) has proved to be an effective tool in addressing well placement problems, and it was employed in this research as the main optimization algorithm.

Flood pattern analysis was conducted to determine the optimum pattern for the development of the reservoir model built for this study. The first was a homogenous model used to determine the recovery efficiencies of the flood patterns, i.e., 5- spot, inverted 5-spot, 9-spot, line drive, peripheral and staged line drive.

The efficiencies obtained were 78.63 %, 77.89 %, 76.53 %, 58.89 %, 77.7 % and 59.25 % respectively. These were in agreement with the efficiencies published by Crawford with a 5% error.

Investigation into the effect of heterogeneity on pattern selection was studied using cumulative field oil produced, pressure maintenance ability of the patterns, time to breakthrough, optimum pore volume to be injected and the economics of the flood patterns as screening criteria.

The peripheral flood pattern was selected as the optimum flood pattern, while the well placement analysis and infill drilling optimization was carried out to maximize recovery from the reservoir.

A sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the impact of permeability anisotropy, injection rate and maximum number of wells to be drilled on the net present value of the reservoir. After the findings, the optimum well locations, the number of wells and the corresponding well spacing was determined.

The major contribution of this work is that a methodology for infill well placement and flood pattern selection has been developed, with the efficiency of peripheral flood pattern added to literature.

This is a useful tool to support petroleum engineers in deciding how to maximize the value of their asset – the petroleum reservoir.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

 CERTIFICATION……. ii

ABSTRACT…….. v

ACKNOWLEDGMENT…… vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS….. ix

LIST OF TABLES…… xi

LIST OF FIGURES…… xii

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

• BACKGROUND OF STUDY………. 1
• STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM………………. 2
• RESEARCH AIMS AND OBJECTIVES…….. 4
• SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH………….. 5
• JUSTIFICATION OF THE RESEARCH…… 5

CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

• INTRODUCTION……….. 7
• WATERFLOODING…………. 9
  • Types of Waterflooding……………….. 10
  • Factors to Consider in Waterflooding……….. 13
  • Infill Drilling………………….. 15
• WELL PLACEMENT OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUE. 22

CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY

• SCOPE………………. 30
• STREAMLINE SIMULATION WORKFLOW…………. 31
• MODEL DESCRIPTION………. 31
• FLOOD PATTERN ANALYSIS………. 33
  • Case 1…………. 33
  • Case 2…………… 34
• EFFECT OF AREAL PERMEABILITY VARIATION…………………. 35
• INFILL WELL PLACEMENT DETERMINATION AND OPTIMIZATION……….. 35

CHAPTER FOUR DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

• Waterflood Pattern Analysis……… 38
• Effect of Directional Permeability on Pattern Production Capacity… 50
• Effect of Areal Permeability Variation of Recovery Efficiency……… 53
• Heterogeneity…………………………. 59
• Production Analysis……………. 70
• Economic Analysis……………………………………… 73
• Infill well Well Location and Optimization……………. 74

CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• CONCLUSIONS…………………. 79
• RECOMMENDATIONS…….. 80

REFERENCE…………… 81

APPENDICES… 92

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INTRODUCTION

The ability of any nation to survive economically depends upon its capacity to produce and manage sufficient supplies of low-cost, safe energy resources like fossil fuels (Isah, 2014).

The world’s consumption of limited fossil fuel resources currently increases annually by 3 percent, with projections in this trend showing that all known reserves will be exhausted in the next 50years (Isah,2014).

Therefore, any sustained attempt to increase the reserves by even as little as 1 percent per annum ensures an effective eternal supply as the world moves slowly towards renewable energy economics. (Callaghan, 1981).

So, as the demands on energy industries to increase profitability and reduce environmental pollution continues, many industries are focusing on improving recovery efficiency and means to increase their reserves of resources to provide attractive solutions to the problem of rising energy demands.

It is clear how improving reserves benefit profitability by considering the cost of energy.

Conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons are likely to remain the main component of the energy mix needed to meet the growing global energy demand in the next 50 years (Zitha et al., 2010).

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REFERENCES

Abukhamsin, A. Y. (2009). Optimization of Well Design and Location in A Real Field, (June).
Abdel-Kereem A. M., Al-shazly F. A., Shawky M. A. and Bakeer M. B., Water Flooding (Presentation), 2009.
Ahmed   T. Reservoir   Engineering    Handbook, Third Edition, Gulf Professional Publishing, 2006, pp 909 – 916, 927 – 931.
Adeyinka, A., Olatunde, F., & Bodunrin, A. (2017). SPE-189103-MS Deepwater Infill
Drilling Evaluation Using Experimental Design : The Agbami Case Study.
Akinwumi FV, Arochukwu EC, Abdul-Kareem AS (2004) Managing uncertainties in hydrocarbon-in-place volumes in a Northern Depobelt field, Niger Delta, Nigeria. SPE 88880 paper presented at the 28th annual SPE international technical conference and exhibition in Abuja, Nigeria, August 2–4, 2004
Aladasani, A., & Bai, B. (2010). SPE 130726 Recent Developments and Updated Screening Criteria of Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques, 1–24.