Development of Proxy Models for Screening Water Flood and Gas Flood Candidates

Fluid-flood and other improved oil recovery techniques are becoming prominent in global petroleum production because a large proportion of production is from mature oil fields. Although water flooding and gas injection are well established techniques in the industry, several of the screening criteria in literature are discipline which could sometimes be subjective. This work used experimental design techniques to develop proxy models for predicting oil recovery under water-flood and gas-flood conditions.

The objective of the study is to develop a quantitative screening method that would allow for candidates to be evaluated and ranked for water flood or gas injection. The model was applied to some field cases and compared with published models and the well-known Welge Analysis method. The coefficient constants for the oil formation volume factor for water flooding and gas injection was 0.0139 and 0.0434 respectively. Similarly, the coefficient constants for water injection and gas injection for the generated proxy model was -2.34* 10-8 and -6.1 *10-5 respectively. The results show that the proxy models developed are quite robust and can be used for first pass screening of water and gas flood candidates.