Injectivity during PWRI and Disposal in Thick Low Permeable Formations (Laboratory and Mathematical Modelling, Field Case)

Produced water management is a growing challenge for oil and gas industry. Over the last decade, the scale of produced water re-injection (PWRI) and disposal in petroleum industry has increased tremendously. PWRI is an important economic and environmental-friendly option to convert waste to value with waterflooding. Nevertheless, drastic decline of injectivity, widely reported in the literature, restricts the project efficiency. In the present work, laboratory coreflood test using low permeable core sample is performed to investigate the impedance (normalised reciprocal of injectivity) behaviour. Analytical model for well impedance growth, along with probabilistic histograms of injectivity damage parameters, is applied to the well injectivity decline prediction during produced water disposal in a thick low permeable formation (Volkersen field). Unusual convex form of impedance curve is observed in both laboratory coreflooding and well behaviour modelling. Impedance grows slower during external cake formation compared to that during deep bed filtration. This is due to low reservoir permeability and consequent high values of filtration and formation damage coefficients causing fast impedance growth during deep bed filtration; while external cake build-up yields relatively slower impedance growth during cake formation. Risk analysis method using probabilistic histograms of injectivity damage parameters is applied to well behaviour prediction under high uncertainty conditions.