Streamline Tracing and Time of Flight Diagnostics for Waterflooding Optimization: Theory and Application

Abstract

The objective of this work is to demonstrate the power and utility of streamline-based methods for flow diagnostics and waterflooding optimization. The robustness and high efficiency of the new post-simulation streamline tracing tool allows engineers to expand the use of streamline for flow diagnostics. Waterflooding is widely used for enhanced oil recovery, but the presence of high reservoir heterogeneity often leads to premature water breakthrough and low sweep efficiency. It eventually reduces field oil recovery. Streamline-based approaches have been widely used for reservoir management. Because of streamline method’s ability to depict fluid front, it is very effective for waterflooding reservoir management. The new tracing tool is more robust in handling non-neighbor connection, and its fast computation makes flow diagnostic analyses applicable for large scale field cases. In this research, the application of streamline flow diagnostic plots in 2D synthetic case, 3D benchmark case, and 3D field case are demonstrated to evaluate reservoir and waterflooding performance. Furthermore, the use of flow diagnostic plots is extended to test and compare the performance of several streamline-based waterflooding optimization methods: streamline rate allocation using well allocation factors, streamline equalizing arrival time, and streamline-based NPV. The testing is conducted in 2D synthetic case and 3D benchmark case. All optimization cases tested support that streamline-based NPV method has the best performance in optimizing field NPV and is robust in all stages of the field operation.