Summary
Implementing water injection during the early stage of a new reservoir's
development is a process that is gaining popularity around the world. This is
especially true in Saudi Arabia, where water injection is used both to improve
oil recovery and to maintain pressure by placing short or long horizontal
water-injection wells around the reservoir flanks.
For cases where water-injection wells are placed in reservoir flanks, some
of the producing wells are perforated transverse to the water-injection wells
to improve the oil recovery around the involved areas. For this specific
exploitation strategy, there is a potential risk of water channeling from the
injector to the producing well toe, which, once it happens, might jeopardize
recovery efficiency.
For the referenced exploitation strategy, a new completion methodology is
proposed that considers the placement of a fracture barrier at the toe of the
producing well to delay water intrusion and improve recovery efficiency. This
paper discusses the use of nonconductive barrier fractures and the benefits of
the completion methodology, supported with extensive simulations for the
different scenarios.
© 2011. Society of Petroleum Engineers
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History
- Original manuscript received:
6 March 2010
- Meeting paper published:
21 January 2010
- Revised manuscript received:
24 November 2010
- Manuscript approved:
11 December 2010
- Published online:
9 June 2011
- Version of record:
15 September 2011
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