Introduction

 In place reserve and recovery factor calculation methods could be expected by natural
depletion.
 Presence of gas cap and a strong active aquifer result in providing strong natural drive.
 Insufficient natural drive led operators towards to form artificial drives i.e. water or natural gas
injection.
 Different recovery methods are utilized depending on the production rate reaching the
uneconomical limit.
 We have three phases of production:
o Primary Phase: Phase in which the naturally the production rate had become
uneconomical, via producing from natural drives.
o Secondary Phase: The production is increased by artificial dives i.e. water or natural gas
injection, also known as secondary recovery methods logically.
o Tertiary Phase: In tertiary phase tertiary recovery methods i.e. Thermal recovery,
chemical flooding etc. are utilized when the secondary recovery phase reaches its
economical limit.
 Natural production depends upon reservoir internal energy and arises due to higher pressure
existing in the rock pores as compared to the pressure at the bottom of the well. Whereas,
other recovery methods depends on additional energy (mechanical or thermal i.e. fluid
displacement or in-situ combustion) to recover the remaining reserves in place.
 Methods utilized for recovering remaining reserves in place after the primary and secondary
recovery methods had reached to their economic limits are termed as the EOR (enhanced oil
recovery)

Chapter 01 Factors common in all enhanced recovery methods.

Principle influences on the efficiency of enhanced recovery

 Efficiency of enhanced recovery methods is, “Measure of chosen method’s ability to provide
great HC recovery at an economically attractive production rate.”
 In hypothetical production forecast of cumulative production as a function of time, C (t). One
curve is forecast for natural depletion and other are for proposed EOR method. All forecast
starts from present time (T), to the time of natural depletion. [Note: forecast is made by
material balance or by empirical methods.]
 Therefore, cumulative production and economical flow rate are concerned to continuity or
discontinuity of enhanced recovery method.
 Efficiency of an enhanced recovery method depends on:
o Reservoir characteristics
 Some most important Reservoir characteristics are:
 Depth:
o Has influence on technical and economic of an enhanced
recovery project.
o On technical level shallow reservoir put restraint on injection
pressure that must be < fracture pressure. And cost is directly
 related to depth i.e. cost of drilling extra wells or compressor
power required in case of gas injection.
 Structure (dip of the bed)
o For two phase flow in inclined bed, frictional flow of displacing
fluid is accounted. It shows, desaturation of a porous medium is
greater when gravity plays a part.
o Gravitational forces are truly effective in reservoirs containing
highly permeable sands in which dip is large.
 Degree of Homogeneity
o To achieve high recovery there should be no impediment to
fluid flow within the reservoir.
o Impediments may be of tectonic (faults) or stratigraphic (facies
variation, unconformities).
o Here, interference test and well pressure histories are valuable.
o In faulted reservoirs and reservoirs with high permeability
streaks channeling allows displacing fluid to bypass some of the
oil in place and leads to low recovery factor
 Petro-physical properties:
o ф, K, K (rel.), Pc, θ are the properties to be accounted during
study of enhanced recovery project.
o High ф => high Sro @ end of natural recovery phase.
o High K => enhanced recovery project would be uneconomical.
o Effect of capillary forces on recovery efficiency depends upon
production rate. If viscous to capillary force ratio increases =>
decrease in Sro.
o Nature of displacing and displaced fluids
 In designing an enhanced recovery project the accounted property is fluid
viscosity.
 Viscous the fluid lesser the displacement velocity would be, which show
decrease in oil production and higher the Sro.

o Arrangement of injection and production wells.

Linear Displacement

 Displacement in which fluid velocities have constant direction at every point and for all time.
 It is the limiting case of number of displacements.
 Its study is divided into two:
o Theory of frontal displacement
 Was proposed by Buckley and Leverett, expanded by Welge.
 According to theory, injection of fluid 1 in porous medium initially @ uniform
saturation S1 & fluid 2 @ uniform saturation 1-S1, leads to formation of front.
o Theory of piston like displacement
 Is simplification of the problem of displacement of one fluid by another
  It assumes there is no displaced fluid movement behind the front i.e. oil
saturation behind the front is @ residual value Sor.
 The displacement efficiency is Ed = (1-S1i-Sor)/(1-S1i)

Two and Three Dimensional Displacement

 To study this it is necessary to use numerical simulation by computer.

 Es = Area swept / Reservoir area, is the superficial or areal sweep efficiency.
 Volumetric sweep efficiency (Ev) can be calculated, by weighting Es by hфS.
 If vertical heterogeneities exist within volume swept i.e. some zones will not be invaded by
displacing fluid. This is accounted by invasion efficiency, Ei. Also known as vertical sweep
efficiency.
 Over all Sweep efficiency is E = Es * Ed * Ei

Injection Well Location

 Location of injection and production well depends on:

o Geology of reservoir
o Reservoir type
o Reservoir volume containing HC to be swept (in a time limited by economics)
 It is advantageous to make use of influence of gravity.
 There are two types of injection well location:
o Central and peripheral flooding: in which injectors are grouped together.
 This type of injection occurs in following cases:
 Reservoir with gas cap in which gas injection is taking place i.e. reservoir
is fairly regular anticlinal structure. Therefore, injection wells are
grouped in cluster around the top of anticline.
 Anticlinal reservoir with an underlying aquifer in which water injection is
taking place. In this the injectors will form ring around the reservoir.
 Mono-clonal reservoir with gas cap or aquifer undergoing gas or water
injection. Injectors are grouped in one or more lines located towards
base of reservoir in case of water injection and towards the top in case
of gas injection.
o Pattern flooding: in which the injectors are distributed amongst the production wells.
 Are applied in reservoirs having small dip and large surface area.
 To ensure uniform sweep injection wells are distributed amongst the production
wells i.e. convert existing wells to injectors or by drilling infill injection wells. To
obtain uniform distribution of wells.
 Common patterns are as following;
 Direct Line Drive
o Lines of injection and production wells are directly opposed and
system is characterized by two parameters:
 a= spacing between wells of the same type
 d= spacing between lines of injection and production
wells
  Staggered Line Drive
o Wells are in line, the injectors and producers being no longer
opposed but laterally displaced, normally by distance a/2.
 Five Spot
o Particular case of staggered line drive in which d/a = ½.
o Is well known pattern.
o Injector well is located at the center of square defined by four
production wells.
o In pattern A, B, C injection and production wells are equal in
number. (I/P = 1)
 Seven Spot
o Injection wells are located @ the corners of a hexagon with
production well @ its center.
o There are twice as many injection wells as production wells.
(I/P = 2)
 Nine Spot
o Pattern is similar to five spot, but extra injection well is drilled
@ middle of each side of the square.
o There are three times as many injection wells as production
wells. (I/P = 3)

Note: It is usual to name regular pattern by the number of injection wells surrounding each producer
plus one. There are also inverted pattern in which injection and production well location are reversed
w.r.t classical pattern. Classical Seven Spot I/P = 2 => Inverted Seven Spot I/P = ½.

Choice of pattern is limited to either a line drive or five spot and since other patterns require drilling of
additional wells and choice usually base upon technical or economical factor.

Drilling new wells show major part of investment in enhanced recovery project. Conversion of producer
to injector reduces production capacity of field i.e. recovery will be prolonged and profitability will
decrease.