Assessing the Heavy Oil Waterflood Efficiency through Integrated Crosswell Testing and Advanced Production Analysis

Abstract The paper presents a study of a heavy oil mature field in Oman with aggressive water cut growth and slightly exceeding the ultimate recovery as per the initial Master Development Plan expectations. The reserves have been naturally depleted for more than a decade before trying out the waterflood a few years back. The first results of the waterflood were not consistent due to high cross-well interference from one side and possible compartmentalization from another. The key objective of the current study was to assess the on-going waterflood efficiency, cross-well interference, possible production complications and assess possibility of improving further recovery. The key instrument of the cross-well interference analysis was based on multiwell deconvolution of the permanent downhole pressure gauges in response to the historical flow rate variations in offset wells. The water cut diagnostics was based on the large number of well-by-well metrics including recovery micro-modelling baselines, multiphase IPR analysis and multiphase productivity analysis. The mobile reserves’ potential was assessed through material balance, fractional flow analysis and decline curve analysis. Both watercut diagnostics and reserves evaluation have been facilitated by a digital assistant with a fully automated generator of numerous diagnostic metrics which otherwise would take an unrealistically long time to perform such a study. The study has come to the conclusion that all wells are fairly connected but confirmed the deterioration of connectivity between a few wells. The water injectors have confirmed a fair connectivity with all surrounding producers while the aquifer was found to be much weaker than the effect from water injection in these wells. The study suggests that this field still contains commercial volumes of hydrocarbon reserves which can be economically recovered, preferably via horizontal side-tracks from existing wells. It has been recommended to repressurize two main reservoir units independently. The study has spotted a few suspects of thief water production and recommended reservoir-orientated production logging to locate the water source, which was most probably occurring behind the casing. These wells have been recommended as primary candidates for side-tracking. The current study was extensively using a combination of bottomhole pressure deconvolution and advanced watercut diagnostics for heavy oil production to provide a holistic analysis of the remaining reserves. The study also provides the comparison of the results of pressure forecast between multiwell deconvolution technique (MDCV), artificial neural network (ANN) and capacitance-resistivity model (CRM).