SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering
Volume 14, Number 4, August 2011, pp. 433-445

SPE-114222-PA

An Active Method for Characterization of Flow Units Between Injection/Production Wells by Injection-Rate Design

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DOI  More information 10.2118/114222-PA http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/114222-PA

Citation

  • Lee, K.-H., Ortega, A., Nejad, A.M., and Ershaghi, I. 2011. An Active Method for Characterization of Flow Units Between Injection/Production Wells by Injection-Rate Design. SPE Res Eval & Eng  14 (4): 433-445. SPE-114222-PA. doi: 10.2118/114222-PA.

Discipline Categories

  • 6.8 Fundamental Research in Reservoir Description and Dynamics

Keywords

  • Reservoir Description and Dynamics

Summary

This paper presents a novel data-mining method to characterize the flow units between injection and production wells in a waterflood, using carefully implemented variations in injection rates. The method allows the computation of weight factors representing the influence of any of the injectors surrounding a given producer. The weight factors are used to characterize the effective contribution of injection wells to the total gross production in surrounding production wells. A wavelet approach is used to design the perturbation in the injection rates and to analyze the observed variations in the gross production rates.

Tracking the contribution of injectors to various producers can help in balancing voidage replacement in waterflood optimization. A second application is reservoir characterization, in which information provided by the proposed procedure can help in mapping high-permeability flow units such as channels and fractures as well as flow barriers between wells. The method was calibrated and tested successfully for simulated line-drive and five-spot patterns with various assumed flow units and flow-heterogeneity conditions. The paper also includes a case study for a tight-formation waterflood in which the weight factors are intended to delineate the pattern of natural high-permeability channels causing preferential flows.

© 2011. Society of Petroleum Engineers

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History

  • Original manuscript received: 27 January 2010
  • Meeting paper published: 30 March 2008
  • Revised manuscript received: 17 February 2011
  • Manuscript approved: 29 April 2011
  • Published online: 12 August 2011
  • Version of record: 15 August 2011