SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering
Volume 14, Number 2, April 2011, pp. 193-203

SPE-112509-PA

Formation-Damage Evaluation From Nonlinear Skin Growth During Coreflooding

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DOI  More information 10.2118/112509-PA http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/112509-PA

Citation

  • Bedrikovetsky, P., Vaz, A.S.L. Jr., Furtado, C., and de Souza, A.L.S. 2011. Formation-Damage Evaluation From Nonlinear Skin Growth During Coreflooding. SPE Res Eval & Eng  14 (2): 193-203. SPE-112509-PA. doi: 10.2118/112509-PA.

Discipline Categories

  • 5.3.6 Produced Water Management and Control
  • 5.5.4 Rock/Fluid Interactions
  • 6.6.2 Core Analysis
  • 6.4.1 Waterflooding
  • 6.3.1 Flow in Porous Media

Keywords

  • Formation damage, Injectivity, Three-point-pressure method, Deep bed filtration, Suspension flow

Summary

Injectivity decline of oilfield injection wells is a widespread phenomenon during seawater/produced-water injection. The decline may result in significant cost increase of the waterflooding project. Reliable modeling-based prediction of injectivity-index decrease is important for waterflood design as well as for the planning of preventive injected-water treatment. One of the reasons for well injectivity decline is permeability decrease caused by rock plugging by solid/liquid particles suspended in the injected water.

The mathematical model for deep-bed filtration contains two empirical functions: the filtration coefficient and the formation-damage coefficient. These empirical coefficients must be determined from laboratory coreflood tests by forcing water with particles to flow through the core samples. A routine laboratory method determines the filtration coefficient from expensive and difficult particle-concentration measurements at the core effluent; then, the formation-damage coefficient is determined from inexpensive and simple pressure-drop measurements. An alternative three-point-pressure method uses pressure data at an intermediate point of the core, supplementing pressure measurements at the core inlet and outlet. The method provides unique and stable values for constant-filtration and formation-damage coefficients.

In the current work, we consider a more complex case in which both coefficients are linear functions of retained-particle concentration. In this case, the model is fully determined by four constants. The three-point-pressure method furnishes unique values for the four model parameters. A new semianalytical model for axisymmetric suspension filtration was developed to predict well-injectivity decline from the linear coreflood data with pressure measurements in three core points.

© 2011. Society of Petroleum Engineers

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History

  • Original manuscript received: 15 November 2007
  • Meeting paper published: 14 February 2008
  • Revised manuscript received: 19 May 2010
  • Manuscript approved: 13 October 2010
  • Published online: 24 March 2011
  • Version of record: 6 April 2011