MSc Petroleum Engineering

School of Engineering

Reservoir Engineering
Oil Recovery

Lecturer Name, PhD Page 1 www.abdn.ac.uk

Course outline:

• General topics
• Displacement efficiency
• Sweep efficiency
• Reservoir heterogeneity and heterogeneity
index
• Fractional-Flow Analysis of EOR Processes

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Reservoir oil recovery
▪ Mobile oil, it equals to 1-Swi-Sor at the end of a specific
displacement.
▪ Immobile oil equals to Sor at the end of a specific displacement.
▪ Two direction to improve oil recovery, improve sweep efficiency or
reduce immobile oil saturation.

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Summary of EOR methods

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Examples of EOR Processes and AGENT

Process Agent
STUFF Effect
polymer polymer increases viscosity of water
hot water heat reduces viscosity of oil
surfactant surfactant reduces IFT, makes oil and water "miscible"
wettability
alteration surfactant changes wettability of rock
alkaline alkali changes wettbility, IFT
(lower)
lo-sal salinity changes wettability
foam surfactant reduces mobility of gas
miscible solvent replaces oil; changes viscosity of non-aq phase

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Displacement efficiency & Capillary number
It may be difficult to increase the pressure gradient over several orders of magnitude to
displace residual oil. However, with surfactants the oil-water interfacial tension can be
reduced from 30mN/m to 10-3 mN/m. Thus the surfactant flooding enhanced oil recovery
(EOR) process.

Stegemeier 1977
v Lake, 1989
Nc =
 cos 
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Effect of wettability on relative permeability

• Relative Permeability Steady State method

ko
kr =
k
• Relative permeability data are essential
for making engineering estimates of
productivity, injectivity and ultimate
recovery from reservoirs for evaluation and
planning of production operations. These
data are unquestionably one of the most
important sets required in reservoir
simulation studies.

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Wettability effect on displacement efficiency
• The wettability index is -1.0 for oil-wet and
+1.0 for water-wet conditions.
• When the system is water-wet the oil is
trapped by the snap-off mechanism. The oil
production stops abruptly soon after water
breakthrough.
• When the system is oil-wet the remaining
oil is in the smaller pores which make a
small contribution to the relative
permeability for a given saturation. The oil
production tails out over many pore
volumes of throughput because the oil
relative permeability is small but nonzero.
• When the system is intermediate in wetting
index, snap-off is inhibited and the oil is less
likely to be in the smaller pores and thus Jadhunandan and Morrow, 1991
less oil remains after waterflooding.

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Wettability effect on displacement efficiency
• For the sandstone sample, the most unfavourable recovery is observed as for the most
water-wet case and for the most oil-wet case. The ideal cases have an intermediate
initial water saturation and are overall water-wet to mixed-wet in character.
• In carbonate, the most favourable recoveries are seen when most of the pores are oil-
wet, the difference is a result of the connectivity of the pore space, the nature of pore
and thoat size distributaion and the local variations in wettability.

Jadhunandan and Morrow, 1991 (left) and pore scale modelling (Blunt, 1998)

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Linear sweep efficiency

10

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Areal Sweep efficiency

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Areal Sweep Efficiency

The areal sweep efficiency depends basically on the

following main factors:
1. Mobility ratio M
2. Flood pattern
3. Cumulative water injected
4. Pressure distribution between injectors and producers
5. Directional permeability

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Areal efficiency, mobility ratio

Areal Sweep efficiency for different mobility ratios

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Areal efficiency, mobility ratio

Areal sweep efficiency at breakthrough Areal sweep efficiency as a function of 1/M

and fw.

Lecturer Name, PhD Page 14 www.abdn.ac.uk

Permeability directional and sweep efficiency

Effect of directional permeability on EA.

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Heterogeneity
• Reservoir heterogeneity has a significant effect on water
injection efficiency
• Vertical heterogeneity
Reservoir layers with very different properties (particularly
permeability) will flood differently; water will tend to flow
preferentially through high-perm
layers, leading to premature water-cut,
development, bypassed oil in other
layers and premature abandonment
at low recovery factor

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Heterogeneity

Impact of Heterogeneity on Recovery

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Heterogeneity

Heterogeneity measures

Exsting heterogeneity indices:

Static • Rule of thumb
Dykstra-Parsons coefficient • Relative
Lorenz coefficient • Tested with geostatistical
Dynamic distributions
Streamline measures
Koval’s H factor

Quantify the impact of heterogeneity on flow

• Breakthrough time
• Sweep efficiency an absolute measure

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Vertical efficiency- Dykstra and Parsons
▪ Dykstra and Parsons (1950) introduced the concept of the permeability variation
V, which is designed to describe the degree of heterogeneity within the reservoir.
The value of this uniformity coefficient ranges between zero for a completely
homogeneous system and one for a completely heterogeneous system.
k50 − k84.1
V=
k50

Ten-Layer Hypothetical Reservoir

Depth
A B C D E F G H I J
(ft)
6791 2.9 7.4 30.4 3.8 8.6 14.5 39.9 2.3 12 29
6792 11.3 1.7 17.6 24.6 5.5 5.3 4.8 3 0.6 99
6793 2.1 21.2 4.4 2.4 5 1 3.9 8.4 8.9 7.6
6794 167 1.2 2.6 22 11.7 6.7 74 25.5 1.5 5.9
6795 3.6 920 37 10.4 16.5 11 120 4.1 3.5 33.5
6796 19.5 26.6 7.8 32 10.7 10 19 12.4 3.3 6.5
6797 6.9 3.2 13.1 41.8 9.4 12.9 55.2 2 5.2 2.7
6798 50.4 35.2 0.8 18.4 20.1 27.8 22.7 47.4 4.3 66
6799 16 71.5 1.8 14 84 15 6 6.3 44.5 5.7 Determination of permeability variation
6800 23.5 13.5 1.5 17 9.8 8.1 15.4 4.6 9.1 60
for the hypothetical reservoir

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Vertical efficiency- Lorenz Coefficient
▪ A second method to describe reservoir heterogeneity is to relate the cumulative
flow capacity to the cumulative storage capacity of the reservoir. A curved
relationship will develop as shown in Figure below.

AreaABCA
L=
AreaADCA

▪ L=0, Homogeneous
▪ L=1, Heterogeneous

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Vertical efficiency- Lorenz Coefficient

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 Reservoir Engineering, EG551V

Vertical efficiency- Lorenz Coefficient

Vertical efficiency- Lorenz Coefficient

• This statistical approaches of estimating reservoir heterogeneity fail to capture

an accurate description of the reservoir for several reasons.
• First, the data is arranged in a sequential order, while a true reservoir is not in
any ordered sequence; but the ordering and position of layers is critical when
crossflow occurs.
• A second drawback of the statistical approaches is the reliance on permeability
variations for estimating flow in layers. It can be shown from mass balance
concepts that the speed fluid travels through a layer is dependent on the phase
mobility, pressure gradient, and the k/φ ratio.
• Furthermore, variations for irreducible water saturation are not accounted for
the approaches.
• Other approaches includes dynamic heterogeneity index, such as vorticity based
heterogeneity, or Koval’s H factor.

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