INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 10, ISSUE 07, JULY 2021 ISSN 2277-8616

Analysis Of Waterflooding Performance For

Efficient Recovery
Ibraheem Salaudeen, Ibrahim Ayuba, Mohammed Bashir Abdullahi

Abstract: Water injection into the formation for pressure maintenance and continuous oil production has been in use for decades and still proved very
effective for decades to come. In this study, analysis of water flood was carried out on some filed data acquired from Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
Reasonable control of some important parameters such as water injection pattern and strength, water injection pressure, water injection displacement
speed ensures more petroleum production from the rock matrix in-situ. Roughly 80000 STB of oil was produced before water breakthrough and the well
economic life was estimated to the more than 8 years. Therefore, the water injection scheme was efficient in maintaining the reservoir pressure for
optimum recovery from the formation.

Key words: Water flooding, saturation front, breakthrough, fractional flow, imbibition.
————————————————————

1. INTRODUCTION Lyu et al., 2018, Archer & Wall, 1986, Wei, et al., 2017) . In
Decline in oil reservoir pressure is caused as by oil this study, we modelled water flood by adopting Buckley
production – an effect of drawdown that lead to reduction in Leveret and Corey models to evaluate an active well’s
the oil productivity (Mahmoud et al 2017). Waterflooding as water injection performance.
a secondary means of recovery to maintain pressure above
the saturation pressure has been applied in oil and gas 2. MATHEMATICAL THEORY
industry for many years and still relevant up till current time Starting from the first principle by adopting material balance
and beyond. This water injection method contributes huge relation for water in a linear system to derive equation for
volume of oil barrels to the global oil supply(Al-Samhan et the propagation of a speed of a front of constant saturation
al., 2020). Existing natural drive mechanism must be and critically study the physical meaning in terms of the
estimated with high certainty to be insufficient, so that no displacement performance and behaviour. The governing
risk of making huge investments for waterflooding equation and fractional flow theory assume constant
process. (Ahmed, 2001). injection rate (equal to total rate) by considering Figure 1
There are factors affecting the waterflooding success which
can be divided in two general groups - reservoir and fluid Figure 1: Hypothetical flow of injection fluid
characteristics. Those characteristics are depth, structure,
homogeneity, lithology, porosity, saturation, permeability,
wettability, and fluids viscosity (Mukanov et al., 2016). The
performance of water flooding strongly depends on injection
pattern, fluid mobilities as well as reservoirs heterogeneity
(Elshahawi, et al., 2007). There is therefore the need to
evaluate the necessary parameters that ensure optimized
performance at an economical scale. This is best achieved
by adopting appropriate parameters and tools such as
water saturation, pressure profile, relative permeability and
even production tools. Water flooding has been applied for
pressure maintenance and sustained oil
production.(Mahmoud et al., 2017, Welge, 1952, Elshahawi
et al., 2007, Zixue et al., 2014, Zixue et al., 2014,
Xiangzeng & Tao, 2018, Lei et al., 2019, Hu & Lihui, 2018,

We can write equations 1 and 2 as: For a specific saturation, it implies that saturation is held
constant, therefore, dSw = 0.
Computing its location at a time makes the equation
becomes 0. Rearrange equation 5 to obtain 6 as:
In terms of fractional flow, we have: ( ) ( ) |
Apply chain rule to fractional flow equation to obtain
Rearrange 3 to obtain 4
( ) ( )
By combining equations 4 and 7, we obtain:
Equation 4 is transformed into equation 5 to calculate
saturation as a function of distance and time (x, t) knowing ( ) ( ) |
that fractional flow depends on water saturation
Simplify equation 8 to obtain equation 9
( ) ( )

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Incorporate equation 11 to obtain:

( ) | ( )

Waves or fronts of constant water saturation travel at ∫ |

constant velocity in x-direction.
Equation 9 implies that for a specific saturation, the moving
velocity can be computed, after integration with respect to ∫ |
injection time as illustrated in Figure 2.
It reduces to:
( ( ))
We have the final expression as:
( )
Figure 2: Moving velocity of injection fluid |
Where = average saturation.
By integration, we have: It is easier to use graphical approach to calculate average
saturation behind the shock saturation thus:
∫ ( ) ∫ 1. Identify and locate the initial water saturation (S wi)
at the beginning of flood
2. Carefully draw a tangent to the fw at Swf and
| extrapolate it to intersect fw =1.
3. The Average saturation is the point of intersection
In order to obtain average water saturation, Welge 1952 of the tangent and the horizontal line ( fw = 1)
proposed a method by integrating the saturation term over The above outlined steps for obtaining average water
the distance. (starting from the lower limit (injection point) saturation from x = 0 to the displacement front is
to displacement front. Apply simple material balance, we demonstrated in Figure 3
have:
( )
Combine 11 and 12 to obtain:

By direct integration, we can obtain average water

saturation behind the saturation front
∫
Carry out the integration using integration by part method
*( )| ∫ +

The relative permeability of the oil-water flow is calculated

by adopting Corey model as presented below:
( )
Figure 3 : Graphical approach for estimating average
( ) saturation (Schlesinger & Bernhardt, 2013)

For pressure profile, Buckley–Leverett theory can be

adopted for the flow system in one-dimension. Buckley–
The gravitational term in the fractional flow calculation in Leverett solution is applied to compute a saturation profile
field units can be represented as: Sw(x) at any given time under consideration (Terms, 2020,
Schlesinger & Bernhardt, 2013). Next is the point by point
calculation of pressure distribution along the x-direction
Fractional flow equation can be represented in equation 25 (equation 27) relative to a pressure at a fixed point
and 26 with gravity and without gravity effect.
At any point x,
( ) ( )
( ( )) ( )
At any point x = L - ,

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( ( ( ))) model for the plot ( Li and Horne 2006). As it can be seen
from the Figure, the water saturation increases while the oil
( ( )) ( ) saturation decreases as a result of water injection for
(
pressure maintenance.
1
)
0.9
At any fixed time, t, ( ) is estimated by adopting
Buckley -Leverett solution from its derivatives for each 0.8

Relative Permeability
value of ⁄ leading to two corresponding values of 0.7

Sw. However, numerical value of Sw > Swf will be chosen to 0.6

calculate P(L- ) with known values of 0.5 Krw
( ) as shown in equation 30:
0.4 kro
( ( ( ))) 0.3
( )
( ( )) 0.2
( )
0.1
0
Furthermore, for next pressure, ( ) when 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
( ) and Sw estimated at , we have: Water Saturation, Sw
Figure 5: Relative permeability curve.
( ( ( )))
( )
( ( )) Figure 6 shows fractional flow curve as obtained by
( adopting equation 25. The saturation front (Swf ) was
obtained to be 0.47 with a corresponding fractional flow (fw
) of 0.84 and average saturation ̅̅̅̅ of 0.52. These values,
which are important in estimating cumulative oil production,
) and liquid production rate are all in agreement with
This calculation can be repeated until x = 0. numerical analysis approach used.
1
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 0.9
Table 1 shows some parameters used for the evaluation of
Fractional flow, fw

0.8
water injection project. 0.7
0.6
Table 1: Input parameters 0.5
Parameters Values Parameters Values 0.4
0.3
2
L, ft 5000 g, ft/s 32.174 0.2
0.1
W, ft 300 ρo, g/cm3 0.65
0
H, ft 60 ρw, g/cm3 1.02 -0.1 0.1 0.3 0.5 0.7
Water Saturation, Sw
Porosity 0.2 Bo 1.2

Swi 0.21 Bw 1.05 Figure 6: Fractional flow curve

kabs, md 700 α, degrees 25 The water performance of the water injection is presented
in Figure 7. Based on the Figure, the water break through
Swi 0.21 Wi, STB/d 1800 occurred at 579th day with a cumulative oil production of
841,250 STB.
k*rw 0.55 µo, cp 4.5

Sor 0.35 µw, cp 0.75

K*ro 1 Area, ft2 18000

ew 3.2 PV, bbl 3205699.02

eo 2.3 ut, ft/d 0.59

Figure 4 shows the relative permeability plot of water and

oil in the formation by the injection scenario adopting Corey
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5. REFERENCES
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Authors Affiliation

1,2,3 Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi,

Nigeria Department Petroleum Engineering,
FEET.P.M. B 0248 Bauchi state Nigeria.
Authors’ email
1-isalaudeen@atbu.edu.ng
2-ibrahimayuba08@gmail.com
3- mohd.bashir53@yahoo.com

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