SPE 132624

Evaluation of CO2 Injectivity from Waterflood Values

Venu Nagineni, SPE, and Richard G. Hughes, SPE, Louisiana State University; David D'Souza, SPE, and
Kenneth M. Deets, SPE, Denbury Resources Inc.

Copyright 2010, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Western Regional Meeting held in Anaheim, California, USA, 27–29 May 2010.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
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Abstract
Carbon dioxide flooding is a common IOR method employed in fields which have relatively easy access to CO2. In some
cases, estimating the CO2 injection rate is the most important design parameter which decides the planning, field
implementation and eventual success of a flood. This paper presents a method for evaluating this important parameter from
data that should be readily available for a field.
Water injectivity index values from fields which have undergone waterflood operations are compared to injectivity
index values for the same field while undergoing CO2 flood operations. Different methods for evaluating the indices are
presented as is a process for estimating the CO2 injectivity value from data from secondary operations.
The correlation developed has been verified on injectors which were converted in the same field. Initial injection rates
calculated from this correlation were in closer agreement to actual injection rates than those predicted by other theoretical
formulas.

Background
During the planning of a waterflood or enhanced oil recovery operation, an engineer has to estimate injection rates at a
specified injection pressure in order to size equipment and evaluate flood performance and economics. Often these estimates
are obtained from simulation studies or from analytic or semi-analytic solutions published for the flood pattern being
proposed.
A broad method to estimate injection rates for CO2 injection wells is using relative rate ratios. A ratio of an average of
the CO2 injection rates to an average of the water injection rates is calculated for each well in a field and an average of these
ratios is used to calculate the CO2 injection rate for a new well using the available water injection data from that well.
Theoretical relationships to calculate injection rate for different flood patterns have been presented by Muskat (1949).
These mathematical models were derived considering steady-state flow in a homogenous formation. As an extension of these
analytical models, Prats, et al (1959) presented a method to predict water injection rate for a reservoir having wide range of
permeability values. However, these relationships are applicable only for a flood with unit mobility ratio. Most gas floods
have a mobility ratio much greater than one, so these relations do not work well for gas injection. Caudle and Witte (1959)
used experimental models to develop a correlation between injection rate, mobility ratio and areal sweep efficiency. They
studied the variation of conductance with mobility ratio and flood front advance. These models are very well applied and
verified for waterflood systems.
For a five-spot flood, Muskat (1949) presented analytical solutions for injectivity in unit mobility ratio floods as
0.001538 λh∆P
q water ,inj =
d
log − 0.2688
rw (1)
Deppe (1961) presented a semi-analytical solution for essentially the same problem but which can be applied for systems
with non-unit mobility ratio. For the five-spot pattern, the injectivity is given by
0.003076 hλu (Pwi − Pwp )
q water ,inj =
r rep
log ei + log
rwi rwp
(2)
2 SPE 132624

When the producer and injector radii are equal, the Deppe (1961) injectivity equation differs from the Muskat (1949)
equation by a small change in the constant term in the denominator. One notable advantage of Deppe’s model is the
flexibility of being able to use different well radii for injection and production wells. In addition, λu (the mobility of the
reservoir fluid) allows the application of this relationship to fluid systems with different mobility ratios. Deppe (1961) also
showed the application of his methodology to other flood patterns with similar results.
Rearranging Eqn. 2 in the form of an injectivity index yields
q water ,inj 0.003076 hλ u
(Pwi − Pwp ) = log r ei
+ log
rep
rwi rwp
(3)
For a given reservoir, pattern and fluid system, the right hand side of Eqn. 3 should be approximately constant after
breakthrough. Hence, plotting the left hand side (injectivity index) over time should result in an approximately constant
value. However, Pwi and Pwp are not always measured during field operations; hence the denominator can be altered in terms
of an average reservoir pressure which can either be measured or estimated. The injectivity index would then be
q water ,inj
Injectivit y Index =
(P wi − P res . ) (4)
All these relationships are for a waterflood using reservoir volumes or assume water is incompressible. In order to apply
these relationships to a gas flood system some modifications need to be made to account for the properties exhibited by
gases, mainly the lower viscosity and higher compressibility values. One way to account for these factors, similar to
productivity evaluation, would be to assume the product of the gas viscosity and z-factor terms are approximately constant
yielding the traditional P2 technique (Lee and Wattenbarger, 1996). Thus injectivity index, computed through
qgas, reservoir conditions
I .I .gas =
(P 2
fbhp
2
− P res ) (5)
2
plotted against time should be approximately constant. Lee and Wattenbarger (1996) showed that the P technique is viable
at fairly low pressures. A better approach would be to use the pseudo-pressure technique (Al-Hussainy, et al., 1966). This
would yield
qgas, reservoir conditions
I .I .gas =
(m(P fbhp ) − m( P res ) ) (6)
where the m(P) terms are the real gas pseudo-pressures defined by (Al-Hussainy, et al., 1966)
P
p
m(P ) = 2 ∫ dp
Pb
µZ
(7)
A simple ratio of the waterflood flow rate to the gas injection flow rate would neglect both the viscosity differences between
the water and the gas and the density changes that occur through the P2 or m(P) contributions and should not be expected to
yield reasonable results. The P2 formulation takes into account some of the compressibility changes that occur with gas
systems, but does so accurately only at low pressures. Thus we would expect that the appropriate form of the injectivity
index should be Eqn. 6.

Methodology
To confirm our assumption that the pseudo-pressure calculated injectivity index would yield more accurate estimates of the
injectivity values for CO2 systems, the following steps were used in this work:
1. Field data of surface injection pressure, volume injected and estimated average reservoir pressures were obtained for
wells which were initially water injectors and were later converted to CO2 injection.
2. Water and CO2 injectivity indices (using Equations 4, 5 and 6) were calculated and plotted versus time to observe
any trend. In order to calculate CO2 injectivity index, the surface injection pressure for the well was converted to a
bottomhole pressure using a Microsoft Excel® macro.
3. Trends of water and CO2 injectivity indices from this process were cross plotted to obtain a correlation.
All the equations to calculate injectivity index need an input of flowing bottomhole pressure (FBHP). For a water
injection well, FBHP can be calculated by the addition of the hydrostatic head to the wellhead pressure, and subtracting any
frictional losses. However for gases density varies with temperature and pressure. Hence, density needs to be accounted for in
all ensuing equations to calculate FBHP.
SPE 132624 3

Lee and Wattenbarger (1996) describe the average temperature and z-factor method used to calculate the FBHP. This
method uses an iterative calculation to obtain pressure at the end of selected depth intervals. A Microsoft Excel® macro was
built to estimate FBHP by dividing the entire well depth into a number of smaller depth intervals. Pressure changes were then
calculated for each interval, beginning from the top. Density and z-factor of CO2 in each interval were estimated using the
average temperature and pressure in the interval. The summation of pressure changes over all such depth intervals and
subtracting frictional losses gives the FBHP. Values of FBHP calculated using the macro were compared to measured FBHP
data available for some of the wells. A small error ranging between -0.25% and 2% was observed between the two as shown
in Table 1.
Injection data were collected from two oil fields in Mississippi. Field-1 had data from 5 wells that were water injection
wells which were later converted to CO2 injectors. Of these five wells, data from four wells are discussed at length in this
paper. The fifth well was excluded because it had similar injectivity index trends as one of the other four wells. Field-2 had
data from 8 wells that were converted from water injection to CO2 injection. Injectivity indices from six of the wells from
Field-2 were used to build a correlation while the other two wells were used to verify the correlation. Wells from each field
have been designated as Well-1a, Well-1b and so on for wells from Field-1, and similarly Well-2a, Well-2b and so on for
wells from Field-2. Figures 1 through 8 show well and field plots of water and CO2 injectivity indices for the two selected
fields. Only monthly injection data were available so injectivity indices are plotted on a common time axis in order to make
trend comparison easier.
Field-1
For Field-1, CO2 injection pressure data were not available for the initial several years of injection. Therefore data for CO2
injectivity index in Figures 1 through 6 starts from the first month of the availabile pressure data. For instance Well-1b had
no injection pressure data available for the first 7 years of injection, while Well-1d had no injection pressure data available
for nearly 13 years.
Figure 1 is a plot of all injectivity indices for Well-1a. Water injectivity indices (WII) lie approximately on a straight
line parallel to the x-axis and hence can be assumed to be an approximately constant value. Similar observation can be made
for CO2 injectivity indices (CII) calculated using the pseudo-pressure technique whereas CO2 injectivity indices calculated
using the P2 technique are much more scattered and do not really follow any trend. Well-1b (Figure 2) has similar
characteristics, but with much less scatter in the CO2 injectivity indices calculated using the P2 technique which have an
approximately constant value. This is the only case where an almost constant value was found using the P2 technique. Well-
1c (Figure 3) and Well-1d (Figure 4) again show scattered data for the P2 technique with much less scatter for both the water
injectivity indices and the CO2 injectivity indices using the pseudo-pressure technique. The water injectivity plots for Well-1d
shown in Figure 4 have a greater variation in the values for WII than the other wells and could be approximated as either a
decreasing trend or multiple constant values that varied in time. As with the other wells in the field, a mean value for the
water injectivity was calculated.
The figures described above show that water injectivity indices are approximately uniform during the period the field
was under waterflood. However, CO2 injectivity indices calculated using different equations show different trends. CO2
injectivity index values were almost uniform with time when calculated using the pseudo-pressure relationship whereas CO2
injectivity index calculated using the P2 relationship were more scattered. Based on these observations it was concluded that
obtaining a correlation between water and CO2 injectivity indices would be more useful if the pseudo-pressure relationship
(Eqn. 6) was used for CO2 injectivity index.
These same graphs for the wells in Field-1 were re-plotted without the P2 technique values. Wells 1a, 1b and 1c were
plotted separately from Well-1d to highlight some differences between their WII. Well-1d has greater variation of WII,
ranging between 0 - 7 bbl/day/psi (Figure 6), whereas the other three wells combined have WII ranging between 0 - 2.5
bbl/day/psi (Figure 5). Table 2 lists the mean and standard deviation values for the Water and pseudo-pressure CO2 injectivity
indices for all wells in Field-1.
An average of these injectivity indices for each well can be calculated, cross-plotted, and used for a correlation.
However, as this particular field has no recent CO2 conversions with which we could verify the correlation’s usefulness. We
use the data from this field primarily to explain the observed uniform trends in injectivity indices and also to suggest that
these indices could be correlated. Another field, Field-2, was selected precisely for the purpose of generating a correlation
and verifying it.
Field-2
Plots similar to the ones described above were constructed using injection data from wells in Field-2. Data from six different
injection wells were used in constructing these plots. Unlike Field-1, CO2 injection data for the wells in Field-2 were
available from the beginning of the CO2 flood. Including water and CO2 injectivity indices of all six wells in one plot would
make it hard to observe trends of the data points; hence the plots are separated into two groups, each with injectivity indices
of three wells. Figures 7 and 8 show the injectivity indices of Wells-2a, 2d, 2f, and Wells-2b, 2c, 2e, respectively. Well 2c
(Figure 8) and Well 2d (Figure 7) have a large scatter to the water injectivity data and both show a drastic drop in the final
few months of injection. The remaining wells have a much smaller spread. For several of the wells, it is unclear as to whether
an approximately constant value should be used to represent the data or some trend. Wells 2a and 2f appear to have a similar
constant value (Figure 7) but Well 2a has an almost step change in WII during the last 20 months of injection. Wells 2b and
4 SPE 132624

2e have what appear to be inclined trends for much of their data, but both drop to values that are approximately at the mean
during their last several months of injection.
Field-2 has significantly less CO2 injection data available when compared to Field-1. Due to the small number of data
points, long-term trends cannot be clearly identified in any of the CO2 injectivity index data. An average value of these CII
was calculated to represent each well’s CO2 injectivity index. Though this may not be a good representation for CII as the
flood progresses, this approximation should be reasonable for the evaluation of the initial CO2 injectivity for wells being
converted from water injection. Table 2 lists the mean and standard deviation for Water and CO2 injectivity indices for the
wells in Field-2.

Correlation and Verification

The average reservoir pressure for Field-2 was estimated from the measured well bottomhole pressure data if it was available
or a value of 2400 psia as an estimate of the field average reservoir pressure if it was not. This pressure was used in all
ensuing calculations for WII and CII. The averages of water and CO2 injectivity indices for all six wells from Field-2 were
cross plotted in order to build a correlation. The correlation coefficient (R2) for a linear trend line from these data was low. In
an attempt to increase the R2 value, the average reservoir pressure for each well was iteratively modified. We assumed that
errors in the estimated values of the average reservoir pressure around each well were ±10% of the original 2400 psia value.
The resulting adjusted average reservoir pressure values for each well lie between 2250 and 2550 psia (±6.25% of the initial
estimate of average reservoir pressure).
Figure 9 shows the final cross plot and the resulting linear trend line through the data. The linear trend equation relates
water and CO2 injectivity indices for Field-2 and is given by

CII = 3.5044 ×10 −6 WII + 5.9983×10 −5 (8)

The value of the correlation coefficient (0.646), although not as high as we would like it to be, suggests that a correlation
exists between injectivity indices and that a linear trend captures nearly 65% of the variability in the releationship. A
correlation coefficient of 0.646 can be interpreted as a moderate relationship between the variables. For Field-2, in the future,
if any water injectors are converted into CO2 injectors, one can use this correlation to calculate a CO2 injectivity index from
the average of the water injectivity indices for the well and thereby estimate the initial CO2 injection rate.
The next step in the process was to verify this correlation on one or more of the wells which were recently converted
into CO2 injectors. Two wells in Field-2 were converted to CO2 injectors and each had six months of injection data. The
correlation was then used to estimate the initial injection rate (the average injection rate for the first 5 days) for these two
wells. The two wells that were chosen to verify the correlation will be referred as ‘Verification Well #1’ and ‘Verification
Well #2’. In order to verify the correlation, water injectivity indices for these two wells were plotted (Figure 10) and an
average of these values was calculated. By substituting this average water injectivity index into the correlation equation
obtained above (Eqn. 8), the estimated CO2 injectivity index values for the two wells were calculated.

Calculating Injection Rate from Injectivity Index

Once the estimated value for CO2 injectivity index for both the Verification Wells were computed, the equation for CO2
injectivity index (Equation 6) now has two known values and two unknown values. The known values are CO2 injectivity
index and average reservoir pressure whereas, the unknown values are CO2 injection rate and flowing bottomhole pressure. If
the wellbore parameters for a well are known both these unknown values can be related by the well tubing performance
relationship (TPR). Figures 11 and 12 show the tubing performance curves for Verification Well #1 and Verification Well #2,
respectively. These were plotted by assuming a constant wellhead pressure and using the wellbore data available for these
wells. The wellhead pressures used were the recorded wellhead pressures for the two wells, averaged over the first five days.
Selecting any point on this TPR curve and by substituting its corresponding flowing bottomhole pressure into the
injectivity equation will result in a theoretical flow rate. Repeating this step a number of times for different points on the TPR
curve would give several theoretical injection rates. The locus of these theoretical injection rates intersects the TPR curve at a
single point. This intersection point is the estimated injection rate for each Verification Well. In case of Verification Well #1,
the initial injection rate obtained from the graph (Figure 11) was 2.74 MMSCFD whereas the actual average injection rate
was 2.19 MMSCFD (a 25% relative error). For Verification Well #2, the initial injection rate obtained from the calculation
procedure was 4.87 MMSCFD and the actual average injection rate was 4.97 MMSCFD (a 2% relatve error). These two
estimated values are reasonably close to the measured initial injection values especially considering that the estimated rates
obtained by the relative ratio method gives 8 MMSCFD and 12 MMSCFD for the two wells.

Conclusions
Based on this work, the following conclusions can be made:
1. CO2 injectivity index values calculated through the pseudo-pressure technique were found to have correlation with
water injectivity index values.
2. The trend found for Field-2 may not be robust when applied to another field, but it is easy to apply and seems to do
well. The correlation between the CO2 and water injectivity index values was verified for two field cases.
 SPE 132624 5

References
Al-Hussainy, R., Ramey, H. J. Jr., & Crawford, P. B.: “The Flow of Real Gases Through Porous Media”, Journal of
Petroleum Technology, May, 1966, 624-636.
Caudle, B. H., & Witte, M. D.: “Production Potential changes during Sweep-out in a Five-Spot System”, Journal of
Petroleum Technology, December, 1959, 63-65.
Deppe, J. C.: “Injection Rates - The Effect of Mobility Ratio, Area Swept, and Pattern”, SPE Journal, June, 1961, 81-91.
Lee, J., & Wattenbarger, R. A.: Gas Reservoir Engineering, SPE Textbook Series Vol. 5, 1996.
Muskat, M.: Physical Principles of Oil Production, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, (1949).
Prats, M., Matthews, C. S., Jewett, R. L., & Baker, J. D.: “Prediction of Injection Rate and Production History for Multifluid
Five-Spot Floods”, Trans. AIME, Vol. 216, 98-105, 1959.

Nomenclature
qwater Water Injection Rate, bbl/day
qgas Gas Injection Rate, MCF/day
Pfbhp Flowing bottomhole pressure (FBHP), psia
P res Average reservoir pressure, psia
m(P) Gas pseudo pressure at pressure P
Pwi, Pwp Pressure in injection and production well respectively, feet
rei, rep Radius of the redial segment around the injection and production wells respectively, feet
rwi, rwp Effective wellbore radius of injection and production well, feet
λu Mobility of reservoir fluid, md/cp
h Net pay thickness, ft
µ Mean of a distribution
σ Standard Deviation of a distribution

Tables

Injection
Measured Calculated Difference,
Well Rate, % error
BHP, psia BHP, psia psia
MMSCFD
#1 5.8 3503 3497 -6 -0.1712
#2 4.5 3329 3381 52 1.5620
#3 4.3 3389 3380 -9 -0.2656
#4 1.6 3829 3896 67 1.750
#5 1.6 3770 3844 74 1.963
#6 4.3 3636 3659 23 0.6326
#7 3.3 3462 3479 17 0.4910
Table 1: Verification of macro with FBHP measured in injection wells

Field-1 Field-2
WII CO2 II WII CO2 II
Std Dev Std Dev P res Std Dev Std Dev
Well Mean (µ) Mean (µ) Well Mean (µ) Mean (µ)
(σ) (σ) (σ) (σ)
Unit Bbl/day/psi 2
Bbl/day/psi /cp Unit Psia Bbl/day/psi 2
Bbl/day/psi /cp
Well-1a 1.365 0.4217 4.288E-05 6.281E-06 Well-2a 2500 1.218 0.4076 6.586E-05 1.7466E-05
Well-1b 0.2214 0.1632 4.037E-05 3.438E-06 Well-2b 2500 1.110 0.4628 6.393E-05 9.644E-06
Well-1c 0.3968 0.2519 3.154E-05 5.526E-06 Well-2c 2550 6.595 1.829 8.936E-05 2.691E-05
Well-1d 2.556 1.470 7.055E-05 1.841E-05 Well-2d 2300 4.528 2.730 6.529E-05 1.824E-05
Well-2e 2250 1.262 0.6148 6.994E-05 1.908E-05
Well-2f 2370 0.8670 0.1945 6.012E-05 0.0003102
Verification
Well #1
2585 4.300 1.464 - -
Verification
Well #2
2400 0.8518 0.1906 - -
Table 2: Mean and Standard Deviation of Water Injectivity Index and CO2 Injectivity Index for Field-1 and Field-2
6 SPE 132624

Figures

Figure 1. Plot of all Injectivity Indices for Well-1a Figure 2. Plot of all Injectivity Indices for Well-1b

Figure 3. Plot of all Injectivity Indices for Well-1c Figure 4. Plot of all Injectivity Indices for Well-1d
SPE 132624 7

Figure 5. Well Injectivity plots for Field-1 (Mean and Standard Deviation values for the wells are given in Table 2)

Figure 6. Well Injectivity plots for Field-1 (Mean and Standard Deviation values for the wells are given in Table 2)
8 SPE 132624

Figure 7. Well Injectivity Plots for Field-2 (Mean and Standard Deviation values for the wells are given in Table 2)

Figure 8. Well Injectivity Plots for Field-2 (Mean and Standard Deviation values for the wells are given in Table 2)
SPE 132624 9

Figure 9. Crossplot of Water Injectivity Index and CO2 Figure 10. Water Injectivity index plot for Verification Well.
Injectivity Index obtained from different wells in Field-2 Average value from this plot is used to estimate CO2
Injectivity Index

Figure 11. Graphical solution to calculate CO2 injection Figure 12. Graphical solution to calculate CO2 injection
rate from injectivity index rate from injectivity index