SPE 53136
Waterflood Strategy, Challenges and Innovations
F.A. Kenawy, SPE, Ministry of Petroleum, O.A. Bibars, SPE, Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company, H.H. Hanafy, SPE, Gulf of
Suez Petroleum Company, and A.S. Rezk, SPE, Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company
Copyright 1999, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Inc.
This paper was prepared for presentation at the 1999 Middle East Oil Show held in Bahrain,
20-23 February 1999.
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Abstract
More than twenty four years ago, Gupco (Gulf of Suez
Petroleum Company) initiated the first waterflood project in
Egypt for the giant El Morgan oil field. With continuing
waterflooding experience, Gupco has applied this improved
recovery method for other fields. Currently Gupco operates
14 different waterflood reservoirs. These reservoirs have
produced a cumulative oil representing 40% of their original
oil-in-place. On average, the projected waterflood recovery
factor is 54% of OOIP. Due to non-uniform lithology and
non-uniform pattern of existing well locations in most
reservoirs, peripheral waterflood was found to be the most
suitable and economic waterflood pattern at project startup.
Peripheral waterflooding has the advantage that it minimizes
the number of injection wells by converting the watered-out
producers. As the Gupco reservoirs become more mature, the
line-drive pattern (peripheral + up-dip injection) was found to
be more effective. Since most of the Gupco’s reservoirs are
currently in the mature stage, good managing and close
monitoring for each waterflood project is extremely important.
This paper presents Gupco strategy in managing the different
waterflood projects to maximize both the oil production rate
and oil recovery in optimum manners. This is being achieved
through several common and familiar waterflood issues
including: a) pressure maintenance, b) in-fill drilling, c)
zonal injection improvement, d) injection pattern
modification, e) injection below formation parting
pressure, f) workovers for production and injection wells , g)
continuous data collection, and h) water quality monitoring.
The paper also shows how Gupco is addressing the
waterflood side effects of scale buildup, reservoir souring and
facilities corrosion. In addition, the paper discusses some of
the innovative techniques that Gupco has used to maximize
waterflood recovery and enable waterflooding of marginal
fields. Examples for these techniques are gas-cap water barrier
injection, heavy oil waterflooding, coiled-tube water injection
lines, slim-tube dual completions, and satellite waterflooding
for pilot and marginal fields waterflooding.
Introduction
Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company (Gupco) is waterflooding
fourteen different reservoirs in the Gulf of Suez, (GOS) and
the Western Desert (WD) areas. Gupco started with a
peripheral waterflood for all reservoirs, using GOS sea water
for GOS reservoirs and Baharia formation water for West
Razzak dump flooding.
Gupco has three onshore waterflood plants, El Morgan,
July, and Western Desert with capacity of 400,000 barrels per
day, 300,000 barrels per day, 5,000 barrels per day
respectively. In-addition, one offshore waterflood plant exists
on the Shoab Ali complex platform with a capacity of 10,000
barrels per day.
The design of El Morgan waterflood plant that carried out
in the mid 1970’s was one of the earliest units designed in the
Middle East for this particular applications. The waterflood
plants are designed to process raw water to a finished product
suitable for injection, and to pump the water at sufficient
pressure to transport it to the different reservoirs. Entrained
solids removal, necessary chemical and bacterial treatment,
scale and corrosion control, and deaeration are provided.
Total incremental secondary recovery has been estimated
to be more than 1080 million barrels which is more than the
double of the primary recovery (Fig. 1).
Waterflood Strategy:
Water Injection Scheme. Because of the lithology that exists
within the El Morgan Kareem formation (First Waterflood),
dip angle, and the non-uniform pattern of existing well
locations, a peripheral waterflood pattern was selected to have
the maximum advantage of gravity forces. Other logic behind
selecting peripheral flooding is to minimize the development
costs through utilizing minimum number of injection wells.
Also, to keep produced water as minimum as possible, since
higher water-oil ratio wells can be shut-in and their production
obtained from up-structure wells.
Waterflood Applications. Gupco’s waterflood application
strategy could be briefly classified into three categories. The
2 F.A. KENAWY, O.A. BIBARS, H.H. HANAFY, A.S. REZK
first category includes the technology that can maintain or
increase the injection and production rates. Acidizing /
fracturing, step rate tests, water quality monitoring, and
changing the profiles of injection / production can be used to
increase the injection and production rates. The second
category includes the techniques that can increase either the
areal sweep or the vertical sweep efficiency or both. These
techniques include injection and production profile
modification by both mechanical and chemical methods,
pattern modification, and in-fill drilling. The third category
includes the techniques that improve the displacement
efficiency. These techniques are the so-called enhanced oil
recovery ‘EOR’.
First Category: Increase / Maintain Injection and
Production Rates.
1. Pressure Maintenance Waterflood. With an original oil
in place of about 1.5 billion barrels of oil, the October Nubia
has been a major entity in Gupco production since its
discovery in 1979. However, due to lack of aquifer support,
the Nubia reservoir pressure has declined from 5500 to about
2000 psi. To alleviate this reservoir pressure decline and
optimize future oil production, simulation studies were
completed in 1992 and 1997. Using a black oil simulation
model, an October Nubia reservoir description was developed
via a history match of pressure and production performance.
This model study indicated that two water injection wells are
needed to inject into a total of 90,000 barrels of water per
day. Water injection began in April 1996. Incremental
waterflood recovery of up to 3% is anticipated.
2. Workovers.
a. Acid Stimulation. There are three basic conditions that
can lead to low productivity and/or injectivity.1 They are low
reservoir pressure, low permeability, and high fluid viscosity.
However, if these conditions do not exist, then the cause of
low productivity is probably related to conditions around the
well-bore.
As a result of waterflooding response, large amount of
GOS sea water being produced, thus resulting in scale
deposition in surface and subsurface production equipment
and in the well-bore region. A decline in total fluids is
observed as a result of this well-bore damage. These causes
of low productivity can be classified as: formation damage,
emulsion blocking, and water blocking. Accordingly, a
periodic acid stimulation programs were set to overcome this
problem.
b. Well Completion. In the early life of El Morgan field
production, the production conduit size was large enough to
handle the high production rates. As the production rates
declined especially after recompleting many of the Kareem
reservoir wells to the low productivity top zone, as will be
mentioned next in the paper, smaller conduit sizes were
needed to insure efficient gas lifting operations.
Because of the zonal variation in the permeability and the
pressure, the distribution of the injected water was not
uniform. The higher permeability layers were accepting the
majority of the injected water while the lower permeability
layers suffered from insufficient or lack of the injection
water. In order to overcome this problem, Gupco utilized the
dual string completion technique, where a packer is placed
SPE 53136
between the low permeability layers and the high permeability
layers. The water is injected to the upper layers (above the
packer) through the annulus side and injected to the lower
layers (below the packer) through the tubing string. This
technique has succeeded in providing sufficient volumes of
the injection water to be injected to all the layers at the same
time.
c. Clean-out sand. The sand fill is one of the major
problems in many of Gupco’s fields, El Morgan, July, Badri,
and Younis. The fill reduces productivity and injectivity of
the well by covering up perforated intervals. It is noticed that
there is a relation between sand fill problem and production
rates. The forces, which dislodge the sand grains increase
with increasing flow rates and with higher fluid viscosity. As
reservoir pressure declines, overburden forces may disturb this
cementation.1 Therefore, a periodic tagging of the fill level is
performed to determine the exact levels of fill for cleaning-out
It is needed, to insure that all perforated intervals are clear.
Samples of the fill were analyzed to determine its
composition. Analysis of the fill has lead to the corrective
action that eliminates, or at least minimizes, fill in these well-
bores.
d. Water shut-off. This type of workover permits, by
reducing the water productivity, for an optimum gas lifting
operations consequently improving the productivity and/or
injectivity.
3. Cleaning of Injected water. As shown on Fig. 2, the
injection performance of Badri Belayim reservoir. By mid
1987, injection peaked at 56,000 barrels per day and has since
fallen to approximately 40,000 barrels per day in early 1989
which is far below the level that was predicted when the
waterflood was designed. The problem was simply that
injectors would not take the water volume that analysis
indicated that they should. In early 1989, pressure fall-off
tests indicated not only near well-bore skin damage, but more
seriously the existence of a zone of damage deep into the
reservoir due to injection of dirty water. The cause of the
deep damage was mainly due to bacteria, scale and moving
fines problems. In addition, it is found that damaged zones
are growing, proving that the problem will get worse if left
uncorrected.
In order to remove this damage, thereby allowing an
increased injection rate, an ultra clean water injection project
was initiated in mid 1989. To further increase injection, seven
additional wells were converted to water injection. This
project consisted of plant sterilization for the July and El
Morgan waterflood plants, pipeline sterilization, chemical
injection, and cartridge filtration at Badri where water quality
specifications were established. In order to provide guidelines
on when to stop injection based on water quality information,
100 pairs of TSS (total suspended solid) and particle count
readings were collected from offshore GOS locations.
Although there is a wide range (10 to 130) in particle counts at
TSS of 0.5 mg/l, the majority of points are located below 50.
The acceptable range is not the necessary the desired water
quality but rather it is practical objective based on the
performance of the system.2
4. Step Rate Testing. Step rate testing (SRT) is a technique
to define the maximum safe bottom hole injection pressure
SPE 53136 WATERFLOOD STRATEGY, CHALLENGES, AND INNOVATIONS
without causing a fracture. This pressure is referred as the
formation parting pressure (FPP). Injection above parting
pressure can cause pre-mature breakthrough, poor sweep,
reduced oil recovery and loss of costly injection water due to
uncontrolled fracture extension.3 This is because the fracture
caused by injecting above the formation parting pressure is not
necessarily limited to the oil pay. Fracture can be created to
an aquifer or to a non-productive interval.
Historically, Gupco has operated water injection wells
approximately 50 psi below formation parting pressure. This
operational philosophy is the result of West Texas experience.
Instead of drilling new injectors to increase injection rates,
Gupco got the benefit of running a series of SRTs in the Badri
Belayim reservoir to maximize the injection rate. After
starting the Belayim up-dip injection project, reservoir
pressure started to increase. So the increase of the formation
parting pressure is most likely. Accordingly, an extensive
injection testing plan was set to have the allowability to
increase injection rate that corresponding the higher FPP.
Second Category: Improvement of Sweep Efficiency.
1. In-fill Drilling. In-fill drilling has been performed for
the following objectives:
One) To optimize the areal sweep by densifying the area.
Two) To improve the vertical sweep by locating the
bypassed oil in the deeper zones as a result of the
experienced lateral intrusion.
Three) To recover the bypassed oil on the flanks as a result of
the non-uniform injection that occurred at the early life
of the reservoir water flooding.4
As shown on Fig. 3, originally, Morgan Kareem wells
have been drilled on large spacing ranged between 100 to 200
acres. Since late 1970’s, Kareem reservoir development
continued with in-fill drilling of wells to reduce the spacing
between producing wells and to drill wells in areas where
trapped oil reserves were believed to be located. An extensive
evaluation for the in-fill drilling programs have been made to
demonstrate the real effect of whether it is accelerating
production, adding new reserves, or both together.
During the first stage of waterflood, there was not many
in-fill wells drilled as reflected by the nearly constant spacing
trend. Oil recovery increase during this stage was mainly due
to waterflooding with a better response experienced in the
South Kareem reservoir.
In-fill well drilling has the major share of oil recovery
increase during the second stage of waterflood. In-fill drilling
program associated with the improvement of peripheral
waterflood in the North and South Kareem reservoirs has
showed fairly good success as reflected by incremental oil
recovery increase of about 3% and 4% of the original oil-in-
place , respectively.
Also, the production performance showed that oil rate is
almost in proportional trend with number of wells which
reflects the success of the in-fill drilling and increase oil
recovery.
2. Injection Profile Modification. The purpose of
performing and monitoring injection profile is to see if
injected water is properly distributed to the zones intended for
the water injection. Ideally the injection water would enter a
zone in proportion to its porosity-thickness. In reality water
3
enter a zone in proportion to its permeability-thickness.5
As shown on Fig. 4, lateral water intrusion has been
observed in most of El Morgan South Kareem producing
wells. This phenomenon has been taken place in zone L2
which is the most permeable of the Kareem producing zones
and was accepting almost 80% of the injection rates. The
injection profile has been altered mechanically by cement
squeezing the high conductivity layer L2 so the injection rate
can be zonally redistributed in the deeper zones.
The chemical solutions using gel treatment as a
conformance control method has been already evaluated and is
going to be implemented for the first time in GUPCO by
applying it to some candidate wells. In comparison to the rig
and rigless mechanical treatment methods, the gel treatment
methods are believed to provide more effective isolation
because it penetrates deep into the formation. Also, in most
problems, they are more cost effective methods especially for
a selective top or middle interval isolation.
Lack of injection in the low permeability zones, if it is
commingled with the high permeability zones, is clearly
identified from injection profile tests. Accordingly, separate
injection schemes for these low permeability zones have been
implemented for the top zone L1 in El Morgan field, for the
basal zone R1 in July field, and for the bottom part of the
middle Nukhul in Shoab Ali field.
Also, as shown on injection profile of Morgan water
injection well M-87, Fig. 5, most of injection was going into
the deeper zones L6 and L7 with no withdrawal from these
zones. A squeeze-off job has been performed to shut-in these
zones and the total injection rate has been redistributed for
other zones which still has most of the oil potential.
3. Pattern Modification. Improvement of the performance
of peripheral waterfloods is considered from the aspects of
pattern modifications designed to improve areal efficiency,
vertical efficiency, or both.6
El Morgan Field - North Kareem Reservoir:
Injection began in the North Kareem with a single peripheral
injector M-5 in February 1967. No performance data during
this waterflooding stage supports a position of good
areal/vertical conformance throughout the North Kareem. In
1984, one detailed study of pattern revision was done and the
single injector was replaced in 1986 with six peripheral
injectors, Fig. 6. As a result of this pattern modification
project, oil rate has been tripled with about 20% recovery
factor incremental increase.
El Morgan Field - South Kareem Reservoir:
An extensive study has recommended converting the South
Kareem peripheral waterflood to a line-drive pattern
waterflood, Fig. 7, for the following reasons:
1. Reservoir Complexity. Pressure, production, and
geological data indicated that the South Kareem reservoir
produces from two different units, designated L1 (top zone)
and L2+. The L1 is laterally divided over the crest of the field
by a channel cut, Fig. 7. Pressure performance indicated that
the L1 zone and underlying L2+ zones are in vertical
communication north of the channel cut but function as
separate units south of the channel cut because of poor rock
quality.
4 F.A. KENAWY, O.A. BIBARS, H.H. HANAFY, A.S. REZK
2. Lack of injection support for the L1 zone. Series of zonal
flood-out maps have been constructed for each of the eight
South Kareem producing zones. These maps showed that L1
zone has not had enough waterflooding support and still has
most of the remaining oil potential. Early 1990, IWR
(injection withdrawal ratio) value for L1 zone was estimated
as low as 0.4.
3. IWR problem. Since 1988, total reservoir IWR has been
less than unity with oil rate decline. The primary cause of this
decline has been the shift from L2+ zones development to L1
zone development. This shift in development was natural due
to the water level movement flooding out the L2+ on the
flanks of the reservoir.
4. Unfavorable injection distribution. Zonal/areal IWR
calculations indicated that to achieve the proper injection
distribution, injection rates should be doubled which is
beyond reach from existing injectors.
Accordingly, for the top zone (L1), the waterflood pattern
is designed to contain oil movement at the oil-water contact
with peripheral injectors and improve sweep efficiency with a
line-drive row of injectors.
For deeper zones (L2+) the waterflood pattern is designed
to move the peripheral injection line up-dip to the current oil
wedge and to pattern flood both L1 and L2+ north of the
channel cut. This pattern modification has started late of 1990
with incremental recovery increase of approximately 15% of
the OOIP.
Improvement of the L1 injection-withdrawal ratio was one
of positive results of this plan, IWR has been increased from
0.4 to more than 1.0
Badri field - Belayim reservoir:
Injection began in Badri Belayim reservoir in 1986 but it did
not perform as predicted. Since 1987 reservoir pressure was
in a continuous decline trend as a result of the unfavorable
reservoir IWR which was always below than unity. There
were many reasons for this un-predicted peripheral waterflood
performance but mainly they are:
One) lack of lateral pay continuity due to facies changes
and faulting.
Two) unfavorable zonal juxtaposition due to the existing
faults.
Three) plugging problems around the injectors.
The third problem and the corrective action taken have
been previously reviewed in the first category field
applications section. The first two problems have been
overcome with a plan of modifying the injection pattern by
adding a new up-dip injection line, Fig. 8.
As a result of completing this pattern modification plan,
the injection rate has been doubled with improved IWR above
the unity as shown on Fig. 2. Reservoir pressure also has
been increased from 1100 psi to 1600 psi associated with
incremental recoverable oil increase of about 56 million
barrels. Also, one of the positive results of applying the up-
dip injection plan is correcting the unbalanced zonal injection
distribution problem. Fig. 9 is an RFT plot comparing the
zonal pressure profile before and after the up-dip injection
application.
SPE 53136
Third Category: Improvement of Displacement Efficiency.
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). The oil industry has been
recently placing greater emphasis on EOR for three reasons :
(1) exploration costs have increased, (2) large reservoirs are
rarely found anymore, and (3) producing capacity in countries
that have old oil fields has decreased.
The development of EOR is strongly dependent on both
technical and economic considerations. Indeed, EOR is an
ongoing technology open to great improvements, but current
oil prices act to postpone the development of the most
promising methods. Because economic conditions can rapidly
change, the continuing research for the development of EOR
technology should continue regardless of the current poor
project economics or limited availability of EOR materials.
About 55% of the oil discovered in the Gulf of Suez fields
operated by Gupco will remain unrecovered after the
conventional primary and secondary recovery technologies.
Producing a portion of this remaining oil is the purpose of
enhanced oil recovery. Gupco with the consultation of the
joint venture Amoco company are still in the evaluation stage
for selecting the proper EOR process. Nubia and Kareem
reservoirs that are containing together more than 70% of the
oil in the GOS fields are the primary EOR candidates.
Waterflood Facilities Challenges:
The most common challenges for any waterflood project are:
1. Injectivity decline with time due to scale buildup.
2. Reservoir souring due to bacterial activities.
3. Corrosion due to dissolved oxygen and extensive
microbiological activities.
Gupco from the initial design stage considering these
challenges and proceed with a complete scheme basically
depending on 3 consequent steps to ensure no damages for
both formations and facilities as per the following:
1. Specify water quality based on complete analysis of the
reservoir.
2. Mechanical treatment of the sea water using different
filters and gas stripping dearators to remove suspended
solids and oxygen.
3. Chemical treatment to remove residual oxygen and to
overcome bacterial activities and inhibit scale buildup.
In addition to the above actions to protect formations and
facilities, Gupco also made many efforts to protect the
environment from pollution by the continuously increased
volumes of oily waste water as a result of both formation
water and injection water.
Water Quality. The objective of any water-injection
operation is to inject water into the reservoir rock without
plugging or permeability reduction from particulate, dispersed
oil, scale formation, bacterial growth, or clay swelling. In
addition, souring of sweet reservoirs by sulfate-reducing
bacteria should be prevented if possible.
The injected water must be carefully sampled and
characterized to assess the likely problem areas. The
following measurements are considered essential:
1. Chemical Composition to determine scaling tendencies and
the likelihood of clay swelling.
SPE 53136 WATERFLOOD STRATEGY, CHALLENGES, AND INNOVATIONS
2. Dissolved Gases to anticipate the corrosion mechanism.
3. Corrosivity to quantify the corrosion-rate of water.
4. Bacteria to identify their population in the water. Sulfate-
reducing bacteria (SRB) are of particular interest.
5. Suspended Solids to determine the necessary filtration.
6. Oil Content to define its tendency to form emulsion blocks.
The injected formation is simply characterized by its
permeability. Pore-size distributions may also be useful in the
determination of injection-water standards. Knowledge of the
composition and distribution of clays in sandstone reservoirs
is desirable to assess potential clay swelling and migration
problems.7
Gupco succeeded to reduce the treated water cost from $14
in 1989 to $5.17 in 1995 per 1000 bbls of treated water as a
result of cost management program. This program was
including: lowering the chemical cost by encouraging the
chemical suppliers to improve chemical quality, decrease the
waterflood plants running cost, improve the waterflood plants
performance by modifying the vacuum deaeration system to
be gas stripping system in July waterflood plant on July 1995
and in Morgan waterflood on December 1995.8
Reservoir Souring. Reservoir souring is considered as one of
the most serious impact of bad quality injected water. This
problem is contributed by increasing H2S level in oil
producers as a result of microbial activity. In mid 1996 a
complete ultrasonic survey was performed using a high
resolution intelligent pig to investigate the cause of line
corrosion in a 24 inch subsea crude oil line that transfers the
oil production from El-Morgan field to the onshore
processing facilities. The ultrasonic data with the sample
analysis of the deposits accumulated ahead of the pig
confirmed the mode of corrosion as internal Microbiologically
Influenced Corrosion (MIC).
The H2S results in increasing corrosion rate of production
facilities and reducing gas lifting activities. The reduction in
gas lift activities is attributed to turbines manufacture
instructions that prevents high H2S content in the gas left gas
to avoid damage of sensitive alloys in turbine backage.
GUPCO faced this problem in few wells in two fields, El-
Morgan and Shoab Ali. Production deferral was observed due
to gas flaring that reduces lift gas capacity. Biocides and
aggresive mechanical pigging are used extensively in order to
combat the various microbiological problems created by
bacterial growth in producing, injection and transmission
facilities.9
Corrosion. As the produced water volume increases due to
the waterflood activities, the corrosion rate increases
simultaneously. This resulted in excessive problems in terms
of loss of production and enormous expenses of repair and
replacement of the corroded goods. Two alternatives were
selected after a comprehensive study to replace the N-80
carbon steel, they are: the use of 13% Cr Steel and Fiberglass
Lined Steel in Downhole Tabular. Up to date 43 wells were
completed by 13% Cr steel and 22 wells were completed by
fiber glass lined steel. No corrosion damage was observed up
till now after six years in service. A long term evaluation for
5
the two alternatives will be completed upon retrieving the
existing completions out of hole.10
Environment Protection from Oily Waste Water. To meet
the environmental regulations, GUPCO made many efforts to
develop its water treating system. The waste water treating
system was originally designed to handle 200,000 BWPD.
However, it had been expanded over three phases to facilitate
handling the current 500,000 BWPD throughput. The
continuous increase in the waste water quantity is a result of
continuos increase in the produced water coming up from
natural water influx plus injected water.
The produced water treating system includes nine free
water knockout drums for bulk water separation. Four skim
tanks and one drainage holding tank are used for primary
treatment. Two ballast ponds and one API separator are used
for the secondary treatment. The treated water is then dumped,
via one 36 inch outfall line, into the Gulf of Suez at a water
depth of about 9 meters and a distance of 500 meters from the
shoreline.
To improve the operation of this system, GUPCO has
made a course of actions to achieve the 15 parts-per-million
oil-in-water concentration effluent as per the environmental
regulations. GUPCO efforts to meet this objective can be
found in reference 11 of this paper.
Innovative and Cost Effective Waterflood Methods:
Gas Cap Water Injection. The Kareem reservoir in the
Badri field has a large gas cap. Its performance indicates a
rapid increase in the producing gas-oil ratio with a continuous
drop in the reservoir pressure, reflecting very weak pressure
support from the underlying aquifer.
Based upon a simulation model study done in 1993, a gas
cap water injection process was recommended with an
incremental recovery of 3.6% OOIP.12 This process is unique
in Egypt but has been previously applied in similar oil
reservoirs with initial gas caps in Russia, Canada, USA, and
Hungary. 13,14,15,16,17
Continuous water injection began in April 1995 into the
gas cap along a line of four gas cap water injection wells to
create a wall of water along the western edge of the gas cap.
This wall of water will separate the gas cap from much of the
oil column, Fig. 10. Model results indicated this process
would limit gas production in the oil column production wells
and oil intrusion into the gas cap. Also, it will allow for the
optimization of the water injection into the oil column and
aquifer. Oil production up, GOR sharply declining, and a
leveling of reservoir pressure are responses given by the
model within two years of initial gas cap water injection.12
However, actual performance of the Badri Kareem reservoir
has been indicating a limited reduction in the producing GOR.
It is believed that the gas cap water injection well spacing is
too wide such that it can not keep a continuous water wall
between the gas cap and the oil column. Therefore, two
additional water wall injection wells have been added in
between the existing water wall wells during 1998. The water
wall development has negated the gas cap expansion and
consequently helped to increase the Kareem reservoir
production through an extensive development program during
6 F.A. KENAWY, O.A. BIBARS, H.H. HANAFY, A.S. REZK
1998. This program has included 3 horizontal wells, 3
slimhole wells, 2 sidetracks, 1 deepening, and 1 recompletion.
The producing GOR, however, is trending down. The Badri
Kareem production performance is shown in Fig. 11.
Heavy Oil Water Injection. The July 53 block was
discovered in January 1986 with the drilling of the vertical
platform proving well J-53. The test indicated an API gravity
of 19 and oil viscosity of 7 CP. To minimize the potential risk
of block development, several water injection schemes have
been tested with a PC-based simulator. The model indicated
that oil recovery could be improved by waterflooding the
Lower Rudeis formation to 23% of the OOIP compared to
3.5% by primary. Waterflood started by completing an
existing Nezzazat producer with a unique dual water injection-
oil production completion, Fig. 12, along side with laying a
3.5 inch coiled tubing line to provide required injection water.
Fig. 13 is the production response after the completion of the
project.18
Coiled Pipeline. It is another technology that Gupco is
leading in. The significance of coiled pipeline technology is
the low cost, rapid installation, and pipeline capabilities.
Gupco have a good success in using these lines for
waterflooding of remote fields with marginal reserves.
Some small waterflood projects in the GOS are expected
to develop secondary reserves of about 18 million barrels by
utilizing the coiled pipelines as water injection lines. The 4.5
inch coiled pipeline used to deliver injection water to Younis
Field is the first worldwide and the longest (64,000 feet)
coiled pipeline.
The cost savings which were achieved by using the coiled
pipelines in the Gulf of Suez ranged from 55% to 75%
compared with the traditional lay barge-laying weld connected
line pipe.19
Satellite Waterflood. The satellite waterflood facilities are
locally mounted equipments including lifting pump, backwash
strainer, micro filter and chemicals system to supply water
injection at limited flow rates to remote locations at a very
low cost. This innovative technique can be used to inject water
into small reservoirs to minimize the risk in marginal
reserves, or use it as a pilot waterflooding prior to full flood
for large reservoirs. The platform should have enough space
to accommodate the new facility and a structure analysis
should be performed to ensure that the platform can withstand
the new loads.
Description of the Water Treatment System. The treating
system consists of seawater pump which lift the water from
the sea with about 25 psig discharge pressure. Hypochlorite is
injected at the bottom of the suction line of the lifting pump.
The hypochlorite kills any marine bacteria in the water. The
backwash strainer removes the solids up to 100 microns.
Oxygen scavenger and scale inhibitor is injected down stream
the strainer. The water passes final filtration through the
micro filter where the particle over 5 microns are removed.
The water is metered and injected directly into the well.
SPE 53136
Biocide is injected to the water two hours / week. The system
also includes sampling points and pressure indicators.
The satellite waterflood technique has been used in Gupco
twice in two different fields. In the first application many
problems were experienced mainly due to using gas lift gas to
drive the pumps. Many shutdowns were happened due to
freezing and plugging of the gas piping by the gas hydrates as
a result of gas pressure drop. In addition, severe vibration of
the 10” PVC water piping happened due to the water pulsation
generated by lifting pump. Several trails were made to
improve the reliability of the system but the problems were
not resolved and the operating costs were high. The second
application was done in the October “D” offshore platform. In
this application all the previous problems were solved by
using an electric generator instead of fuel gas as a power
source and replace the gas operated lifting pump and chemical
pumps by heavy duty electrical pumps without additional cost.
By this application the gas lift gas is saved for more oil
recovery. The water injection was started to inject about 6000
BWPD in April, 1995 with no operational problem. Fig. 14 is
a flow diagram showing the satellite waterflood system
components. The installation cost for a traditional 8” water
injection pipeline from October complex to October “D”
platform (about 30,000 ft) is $3.6 MM versus $1.2 MM for
laying a 4.5” coiled tube pipeline and only $100 M for the
locally mounted equipment on October “D” platform.20
Water Source and Vertical Transfer Wells. In 1996, water
injection has been started in the two main productive horizons
of the October field, Nubia and Nezzazat. The water injection
was started initially at a rate of 90 MBWIPD feeded from the
July field onshore waterflood plant and transferred to the
offshore October field complex platform through a 12 inch
pipeline. Reservoir simulation studies have indicated that the
Nubia and Nezzazat reservoirs are requiring now the injection
of 125 MBWIPD and 35 MBWIPD, respectively. However,
the existing facilities could not deliver the desired volumes of
injection water. The existing water injection line had reached
its capacity of 110 MBWIPD and even the July waterflood
plant was nearing its capacity and could not deliver additional
water. Drilling of source water wells was found to be the most
effective solution to provide the required water injection rates.
A multidiscipline team study was performed to evaluate
the shallow massive Zeit sand to be utilized as a water source
zone. The study indicated a huge water bearing zone of 3000-
4000 ft thickness containing a high quality water resource in
excess of 260 billion barrels.
Two subsequent water source wells (WSW) were drilled in
the field. Each well was cased with 9 5/8 casing set on top
Zeit sand. Due to the unconsolidated sand nature of the Zeit
formation the open hole Zeit sand was completed with a
gravel pack to avoid sand fill problems which have been
experienced in the first well. The sand production had caused
faliures to the ESP assembly run in the well to left the
produced water. Fig. 15 presents the wellbore sketch of one
of the two WSW’s.
SPE 53136 WATERFLOOD STRATEGY, CHALLENGES, AND INNOVATIONS
The two water source wells are capable to provide 120
MBWPD that is distributed to three separate platforms for
injection. The produced water quality was better than expected
with total suspended solids below the water injection
guidelines.
No electric power is available to run ESP in remote
platforms that are not connected by pipeline to the water
injection distribution system. However, the reservoir pressure
in the Nubia reservoir has been already depleted below the
seawater pressure gradient. Therefore, it was reasonably
expected that significant volumes of water could be
transferred from a gravel packed Zeit completion downhole to
existing perforations in the Nubia formation at an average
depth of +/- 11,000 ft subsea (Fig. 16). A well with a such
completion is so-called vertical transfer well (VTW). The first
VTW in October field was completed early 1998 by
modifying the completion of an existing Nubia water
injection well. The well was completed by running a
casedhole gravel packed completion into two strings of
existing casings, 9-5/8 inch inside 13-3/8 inch. The two
casings were perforated against the Zeit sand by a TCP gun.
Fig. 15 presents the wellbore sketch for the VTW. The
transfer rate of this well was measured to be 37 MBWPD. 21
Conclusions
1. Peripheral waterflood was the most suitable and
economic pattern type for Gupco’s reservoirs to start
with. When reservoirs enter their mature stage, the line-
drive pattern (peripheral + up-dip injection line) is more
beneficial.
2. To achieve the objective of waterflooding, which is
maximizing the rate of production and oil recovery, the
engineer must closely monitor and evaluate the
waterflooding performance to insure the following
considerations:
One) Expose the oil column to injection and production.
Insure that potentially floodable sections are both
injection and production supported.
Two) Inject into the pay at a pressure below
formation parting pressure. Gupco injects 50 psi below
the parting pressure.
Three) Maintain good injection water distribution.
Waterflood evaluation on a reservoir basis could be
deceiving. Zonal and areal analysis is a must.
d) Keep production wells in good conditions. Workovers
will be required to insure that producers are capable to
produce with optimum rates.
3. An effective data collection program should be
implemented. It is clear that a good reservoir
evaluation and satisfactory results depends on the
amount of the data available.
4. In-fill drilling has proven to be a good method to
overcome the problem of bad distribution of injected
water among the pay interval.
5. To ensure no damages for both formations and
facilities, Gupco applied the following three steps:
a) Specify water quality based on complete analysis of the
reservoir.
b) Mechanical treatment of the sea water using filters and
7
gas dearators to remove suspended solids and oxygen.
c) Chemical treatment to remove residual oxygen and to
overcome bacterial activities.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to convey their sincere thanks to (EGPC)
and (AMOCO) for their permission and support to publish this
paper. The authors also wish to express their special
appreciation to the Gupco members; Joe Ader, Essam Kandil,
Hussein Abu El Leil, and Ehab Ragaee for their technical
support for some part of this work. Also, the authors would
like to acknowledge the assistance of the Drafting Department
in preparing the figures attached to this paper.
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SPE 53136 WATERFLOOD STRATEGY, CHALLENGES, AND INNOVATIONS 13