Stephen C. Rose, John F. Buckwalter and Robert J. Woodhall
Dave Chappell has spent his career working on waterflood developments and operations in Brunei, Oman, Thailand, and Australia. In 2003, he became one of the founding members of Shell’s central waterflood team tasked with improving waterflood performance across the entire Shell waterflood portfolio, based in The Hague, The Netherlands. He went on to manage that group from 2008 until his retirement in 2018. Since then, he has worked as an independent consultant in the waterflood arena.
1. Background 1
2. Introduction 2
3. Matrix Injection 3
4. Fractured Injection 21
4.1 Fracture Initiation and Propagation 23
4.2 Fracture Containment and Sweep Impacts 26
4.2.1 Reservoir Pressure Change Impacts 29
4.2.2 Temperature Impacts 31
4.2.3 Impact of Shut-In on Fracture Dimensions 35
4.3 Water Quality Impacts 35
4.4 Mobility Impacts 38
4.5 Fracture Geometry 39
4.5.1 Fracture Aligned Sweep Technology 42
4.6 Modeling Fractured Injection 45
4.7 Fracture Monitoring 46
4.8 Characterizing Fractured Injection 53
4.8.1 Examples of Poor Sweep Under Fractured Injection 55
4.9 Stress Measurement 56
4.9.1 Horizontal In-Situ Stress Orientation 56
4.9.2 Stress Magnitude 58
4.10 Rock Mechanical Properties 62
4.10.1 Young’s Modulus and Poisson’s Ratio 62
4.10.2 Fracture Toughness 63
5. Hydraulic Fractures and “Pseudomatrix” Injection 63
6. Wormholes 64
7. Reservoir Containment 65
7.1 Containment Assurance 68
8. Wells 70
8.1 Well Type 71
8.1.1 Horizontal Wells 71
8.1.2 Horizontal-Well Cleanup 74
8.1.3 Stimulation 77
8.1.4 Well Placement and Sweep Impacts 78
8.1.5 Multilateral Wells 79
8.1.6 Dumpflood 82
8.1.7 Producer-to-Injector Conversions 85
8.2 Well Completions 86
8.2.1 ICD Completions 87
8.2.2 ICV Completions 89
8.2.3 ICV or ICD? 92
8.2.4 Materials Selection 92
8.2.5 Cementation 93
8.2.6 Sand Control 94
8.2.7 Well Failure in Deepwater Injectors in UnconsolidatedSand Settings 95
8.3 Injection-Well Startup 104
9. Annular Injection 104
10. Conclusions 105
11. Nomenclature 106
12. References 108
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Waterflooding: Injection Regime and Injection Wells by downloading the PDF below.
