Schedule

Successful water injection is fundamental to the success of many deepwater development projects within the Gulf of Mexico. Issues with water injection wells involving rapid injectivity decline and limited longevity have plagued many of these developments. The root cause(s) may not be fully understood. The various sandface designs, plugging scenarios, failure aspects, operational practices, performance analyses, and potential downside mitigations will be addressed in this session. Views on how to approach these challenges will be sought through group discussion.

As the industry looks at effectively developing many of the newest and most-challenging plays in deepwater Gulf of Mexico, the trend has been to develop resources that traverse thick vertical sections of several individual reservoirs. 

A key aspect to effectively producing these resources is to maintain good sweep efficiency in the water injection wells. This challenge is elevated due to high operating costs that limit the number of available wellbores. 

This session will focus on how various operators have sought to obtain high-quality water injection profile control with individual wellbores.

This session will discuss water injector applications in worldwide assets outside the Gulf of Mexico.  The focus will be on design, performance, best practices, lessons learned, surveillance, and the challenges of long-term injection into weak sands.  

This session is a continuation of Session 2 and will further address water injector applications in worldwide assets outside the Gulf of Mexico.  The focus will remain on design, performance, best practices, lessons learned, surveillance, and the challenges of long-term injection into weak sands.  

This session will cover the methodologies and decision criteria followed by various operators in deciding the sand control technique to be implemented on injectors with field examples such as cased versus open hole or cased hole frac-pack versus openhole gravel pack versus openhole standalone screens versus cased hole perforations.

The use of flow control within sand control injector designs may allow for risk mitigation, performance enhancement, and possibly improved recovery.  This session will explore this evolving approach to sand control injector designs through theoretical cases, actual case histories, related equipment designs, and more. The session also aims to discuss how these technologies can provide mitigation for failure and/or performance assurance.

Produced water reinjection (PWRI) allows meeting reservoir requirements in terms of water injection while avoiding discharge in the environment. The oil and solids carried by the reinjected produced water lead to injectivity declines, impairing the long-term performance of water injectors. This session will discuss these injectivity declines, and how they can be limited through fracture growth.

A key aspect of injector well success is completion reliability. Issues that affect injection well reliability are the prevention of undesirable fracture growth, as well as completion and overall wellbore integrity.  In addition, for the case of loss of injectivity, having a means to economically intervene is vital to overall success.  This session will address of the issues surrounding fracture growth in water injectors, and the reliability of different injector well completion designs for various operating conditions. Also, it will address the economics of future workovers.

This is a panel discussion session.  Operators representatives will share their views, and answer questions related to operational procedures, dos and don’ts for injection wells operations, best practices, and current challenges.

The final session will be an attendee-driven discussion on topics covered in the workshop.  This is a high energy session that will be interactive and use the audience response system to identify industry learnings, opinions, concerns and challenges.