Sample Background of the Study Impact of Injection Well Fractures on Well Injectivity and Reservoir Sweep in Water Flooding and Enhanced Oil Recovery

Impact of Injection Well Fractures on Well Injectivity and Reservoir Sweep in Water Flooding and Enhanced Oil Recovery

 

Study Background

            Most water injection wells in waterflooded reservoirs have fractures that increase as the time passes. These fractures can have a considerable effect on the reservoir performance.  Moreover, a single well model that predicts the length of injection well fractures by modeling fracture growth due to fracture face plugging and thermal stresses is coupled with a reservoir simulator to simulate injection wells that have fractures that dynamically grow with time (Neretnieks, 2007). The relative importance of the injected water quality, formation permeability, injection rate and the temperature of injected water on the rate of fracture growth are demonstrated. The single well model accurately accounts for all the physics of fracture growth at the injector while the reservoir simulator accounts for the large-scale reservoir structure (Kohl, Evans, Hopkirk, &  Rybach 1995).

Waterflooding is the most extensively used improved oil recuperation process. Injection of sea and surface water is widespread in established fields (Neretnieks, 2007). Water injection is also used for pressure preservation. Most water injection wells have fractures that increase as time passes. Fractures can be commenced in injection wells due to thermal stresses, transformations in pore pressure and an increase in injection pressure because of particulate plugging. These fractures may have a significant impact on the reservoir performance (Neretnieks, 2007). Unlimited fracture growth can have a number of undesirable effects. The occurrence of mounting high permeability fractures in the injectors distorts the water flood fronts. Depending on the position of the injection wells, this may result in poor sweep efficiency and consequently in premature water breakthrough. Unconstrained growth of fractures can join water and hydrocarbon bearing zones. Basically, an important factor to be considered here is that most injection wells fracturing is induced during the course of injection and these fractures grow with time.

 

Technical Objectives

While the research questions only refer to the information that the researcher intended to question. The objectives, however, will focus on the necessary problems and objectives that should be clarified in order to gather the intended information and also be able to derive specific information that are not limited by the previous questions. With these objectives, the study will be able to attain the necessary information that can help derive further conclusions and proper recommendations. The study intends to evaluate the impact of injection well fractures on well injectivity and reservoir sweep in waterflooding and enhanced oil recovery. The study intends to get the appropriate data to help in making the proper assessment. There are other aims and objectives of the study. This includes:

1. To determine the impact of injection well fractures on well injectivity and reservoir sweep in waterflooding.
2. To develop a single well model that will predict the fracture increase in injection wells due to thermal and pore pressure effects and particle plugging.
3. To determine the relationship of injection well fractures and enhancement of oil recovery.
4. To identify the significant effect of injection well fractures to enhancement of oil recovery.

 

Expected Outcomes

The study will initially gather information that will serve as introductory part of the study. These kind of information helps the reader what the study is about, what it intends to do and what will be its result. The study will then gather related literature to prove the need for conducting the study. The literature review can help in determining what are the studies already done, what study needs to be corrected. The study will then determine the methods and means for data to be gathered and analyzed. In this part the data is being readied to be gathered and analyzed but the method to gather it will first be determined.  The next part of the study is gathering, presenting and interpreting the data. In this part the validity of the hypothesis and ideas about the study will be proven. The last part of the study will be the part where conclusions and recommendations will be stated. In this part final statement about the study will be done.

 

Methodology

The main forms of primary research that are to be carried out will involve information collected from interviews, questionnaires both physical and electrical i.e. by post and by e-mail, case studies linked to the injection of well fractures on well injectivity and reservoir sweep in water flooding and enhanced oil recovery.

Information collected from interviews, from those closely linked to the injection of well fractures on well injectivity and reservoir sweep in water flooding and enhanced oil recovery will be sourced, discussing the impact of injection of well fractures injections. Questionnaires will be carefully distributed with a selective rather than cumulative approach. The questionnaires shall be given to those who have an insight into Impact of Injection Well Fractures (Creswell, 1994).

 

References

 

Creswell, JW 1994, Research design: qualitative and quantitative approaches, Sage, Thousand Oaks, California.

 

Neretnieks, I 2007, Single Well Injection Withdrawal Tests (SWIW) in Fractured Rock - Some Aspects on Interpretation, Report R-07-54, Department of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

 

Kohl, T Evans, KF Hopkirk, RJ &  Rybach, L  1995, Coupled Hydraulic, Thermal, and Mechanical Considerations for the Simulation of Hot Dry Rock Reservoirs,  Geothermics, Vol. 24, No. 3, p. 345 – 359..