Aquifers

A surface casing is finally cemented to prevent hole collapse and protect shallow aquifers. 

Data gathering in the water column should not be overlooked at the appraisal stage of the field life. Assessing the size and flow properties of the aquifer are essential in predicting the pressure support which may be provided. Sampling of the formation water is necessary to assess the salinity of the water for use in the determination of hydrocarbon saturations. 

Keywords reducing uncertainty, cost-effective information, ranking sources of uncertainty, re-processing seismic, interference tests, aquifer behaviour, % uncertainty, decision tree analysis, value of information, fiscal regime, suspended wells, phased development. 

Solution gas drive (or depletion drive) Gas cap drive Water drive with a large underlying aquifer Undersaturated oil (no gas cap) Saturated oil with a gas cap Saturated or undersaturated oil... 

Solution gas drive occurs in a reservoir which contains no initial gas cap or underlying active aquifer to support the pressure and therefore oil is produced by the driving force due to the expansion of oil and connate water, plus any compaction drive.. The contribution to drive energy from compaction and connate water is small, so the oil compressibility initially dominates the drive energy. Because the oil compressibility itself is low, pressure drops rapidly as production takes place, until the pressure reaches the bubble point. 

Commonly the wafer cuf remains small in solution gas drive reservoirs, assuming that there is little pressure support provided by the underlying aquifer. Water cut is also referred to as BS W(base sediment and water), and is defined as ... 

Natural water drive occurs when the underlying aquifer is both large (typically greater than ten times the oil volume) and the water is able to flow Into the oil column, i.e. it has a communication path and sufficient permeability. If these conditions are satisfied, then once production from the oil column creates a pressure drop the aquifer responds by expanding, and water moves into the oil column to replace the voidage created by production. Since the water compressibility is low, the volume of water must be large to make this process effective, hence the need for the large connected aquifer. 

The prediction of the size and permeability of the aquifer is usually difficult, since there is typically little data collected in the water column exploration and appraisal wells are usually targeted at locating oil. Hence the prediction of aquifer response often remains a major uncertainty during reservoir development planning. In order to see the reaction of an aquifer, it is necessary to produce from the oil column, and measure the response in terms of reservoir pressure and fluid contact movement use is made of the material balance technique to determine the contribution to pressure support made by the aquifer. Typically 5% of the STOMP must be produced to measure the response this may take a number of years. 

The aquifer response (or impact of the water injection wells) may maintain the reservoir pressure close to the initial pressure, providing a long plateau period and slow decline of oil production. The producing GOR may remain approximately at the solution GOR if the reservoir pressure is maintained above the bubble point. The outstanding feature of the production profile is the large increase in water cut over the life of the field, which is usually the main reason for abandonment. Water cut may exceed 90% in the final part of the field life. As water cut increases, so oil production typically declines a constant gross liquids (oil plus water) production may be maintained. 

The recovery factor (RF) is in the range 30-70%, depending on the strength of the natural aquifer, or the efficiency with which the injected water sweeps the oil. The high RF is an incentive for water injection into reservoirs which lack natural water drive. 

It is possible that more than one of these drive mechanisms occur simultaneously the most common combination being gas cap drive and natural aquifer drive. Material balance techniques are applied to historic production data to estimate the contribution from each drive mechanism. 

Gas reservoirs are produced by expansion of the gas contained in the reservoir. The high compressibility of the gas relative to the water in the reservoir (either connate water or underlying aquifer) make the gas expansion the dominant drive mechanism. Relative to oil reservoirs, the material balance calculation for gas reservoirs is rather simple. A major challenge in gas field development is to ensure a long sustainable plateau (typically 10 years) to attain a good sales price for the gas the customer usually requires a reliable supply of gas at an agreed rate over many years. The recovery factor for gas reservoirs depends upon how low the abandonment pressure can be reduced, which is why compression facilities are often provided on surface. Typical recovery factors are In the range 50 to 80 percent. 

Permeability (k) is a rock property, while viscosity (fi) is a fluid property. A typical oil viscosity is 0.5 cP, while a typical gas viscosity is 0.01 cP, water being around 0.3 cP. For a given reservoir, gas is therefore around two orders of magnitude more mobile than oil or water. In a gas reservoir underlain by an aquifer, the gas is highly mobile compared to the water and flows readily to the producers, provided that the permeability in the reservoir is continuous. For this reason, production of gas with zero water cut is common, at least in the early stages of development when the perforations are distant from the gas-water contact. 

As the gas is produced, the pressure in the reservoir drops, and the aquifer responds to this by expanding and moving into the gas column. As the gas water contact moves up, the risk of coning water into the well Increases, hence the need to initially place the perforations as high as possible in the reservoir. 

The primary drive mechanism for gas field production is the expansion of the gas contained in the reservoir. Relative to oil reservoirs, the material balance calculations for gas reservoirs is rather simple the recovery factor is linked to the drop in reservoir pressure in an almost linear manner. The non-linearity is due to the changing z-factor (introduced in Section 5.2.4) as the pressure drops. A plot of (P/ z) against the recovery factor is linear if aquifer influx and pore compaction are negligible. The material balance may therefore be represented by the following plot (often called the P over z plot). 

Analytical models using classical reservoir engineering techniques such as material balance, aquifer modelling and displacement calculations can be used in combination with field and laboratory data to estimate recovery factors for specific situations. These methods are most applicable when there is limited data, time and resources, and would be sufficient for most exploration and early appraisal decisions. However, when the development planning stage is reached, it is becoming common practice to build a reservoir simulation model, which allows more sensitivities to be considered in a shorter time frame. The typical sorts of questions addressed by reservoir simulations are listed in Section 8.5. 

The number of injectors required may be estimated in a similar manner, but it is unlikely that the exploration and appraisal activities will have included injectivity tests, of say water injection into the water column of the reservoir. In this case, an estimate must be made of the injection potential, based on an assessment of reservoir quality in the water column, which may be reduced by the effects of compaction and diagenesis. Development plans based on water injection or natural aquifer drive often suffer from lack of data from the water bearing part of the reservoir, since appraisal activity to establish the reservoir properties in the water column is frequently overlooked. In the absence of any data, a range of assumptions of injectivity should be generated, to yield a range of number of wells required. If this range introduces large uncertainties into the development plan, then appraisal effort to reduce this uncertainty may be justified. 

Possible water sources for injection are sea water, fresh surface water, produced water or aquifer water (not from the producing reservoir). Once it has been established that there is enough water to meet demand (not an issue in the case of sea water), it is important to determine what type of treatment is required to make the water suitable for injection. This is investigated by performing laboratory tests on representative water samples. 

Reservoir pressure is measured in selected wells using either permanent or nonpermanent bottom hole pressure gauges or wireline tools in new wells (RFT, MDT, see Section 5.3.5) to determine the profile of the pressure depletion in the reservoir. The pressures indicate the continuity of the reservoir, and the connectivity of sand layers and are used in material balance calculations and in the reservoir simulation model to confirm the volume of the fluids in the reservoir and the natural influx of water from the aquifer. The following example shows an RFT pressure plot from a development well in a field which has been producing for some time. 

Hydrocarbon-water contact movement in the reservoir may be determined from the open hole logs of new wells drilled after the beginning of production, or from a thermal decay time (TDT) log run in an existing cased production well. The TDT is able to differentiate between hydrocarbons and saline water by measuring the thermal decay time of neutrons pulsed into the formation from a source in the tool. By running the TDT tool in the same well at intervals of say one or two years (time lapse TDTs), the rate of movement of the hydrocarbon-water contact can be tracked. This is useful in determining the displacement in the reservoir, as well as the encroachment of an aquifer. 

New technology is applied to existing fields to enhance production. For example, horizontal development wells have been drilled in many mature fields to recover remaining oil, especially where the remaining oil is present in thin oil columns after the gas cap and/or aquifer have swept most of the oil. Lately, the advent of multi-lateral wells drilled with coiled tubing have provided a low cost option to produce remaining oil as well as low productivity reservoirs. 

Bioremediation is also an option when spills of such compounds contaminate groundwater. For example, bioremediation seems a feasible treatment for aquifers contaminated with alkylpyridines (72) and phenol (73). 

Groundwater. One approach to minimizing the environmental impact of excess nitrogen in groundwater migrating into rivers and aquifers is to intercept the water with rapidly growing trees, such as poplars, that will use the contaminant as a fertilizer. 

Microemulsions became well known from about 1975 to 1980 because of their use ia "micellar-polymer" enhanced oil recovery (EOR) (35). This technology exploits the ultralow iaterfacial tensions that exist among top, microemulsion, and bottom phases to remove large amounts of petroleum from porous rocks, that would be unrecoverable by conventional technologies (36,37). Siace about 1990, iaterest ia the use of this property of microemulsions has shifted to the recovery of chloriaated compounds and other iadustrial solveats from shallow aquifers. The latter appHcatioa (15) is sometimes called surfactant-enhanced aquifer remediation (SEAR). 

Temperatures of hydrothermal reservoirs vary widely, from aquifers that are only slightly warmer than the ambient surface temperature to those that are 300°C and hotter. The lower temperature resources are much more common. The value of a resource for thermal appHcations increases directiy with its temperature, and in regions having hotter water more extensive use of geothermal resources has been implemented. Resources in remote areas often go unused unless hot enough to be employed in generating electricity. 

The term aquifer is used to denote an extensive region of saturated material. There are many types of aquifers. The primary distinction between types involves the boundaries that define the aquifer. An unconfined aquifer, also known as a phraetic or water table aquifer, is assumed to have an upper boundary of saturated soil at a pressure of zero gauge, or atmospheric pressure. A confined aquifer has a low permeabiUty upper boundary that maintains the interstitial water within the aquifer at pressures greater than atmospheric. For both types of aquifers, the lower boundary is frequendy a low permeabihty soil or rock formation. Further distinctions exist. An artesian aquifer is a confined aquifer for which the interstitial water pressure is sufficient to allow the aquifer water entering the monitoring well to rise above the local ground surface. Figure 1 identifies the primary types of aquifers. 

Fig. 1. Aquifers and monitoring wells where denotes the well screen and Hthe water-filled space in the monitoring well. (—) denotes the water table level, (—), the potentiometric surface, and ( ) the ground surface. Terms are discussed in text.

Fig. 3. Three-dimeiisioiial flow for stream recharge via a water table aquifer where (a) is the elevation view and (b) is the plan view.

Nested wells can also be used to analyze multilayer aquifer flow. There are many situations involving interaquifer transport owing to leaky boundaries between the aquifers. The primary case of interest involves the vertical transport of fluid across a horizontal semipermeable boundary between two or more aquifers. Figure 4 sets out the details of this type of problem. Unit 1 is a phraetic aquifer, bound from below by two confined aquifers, having semipermeable formations at each interface. 

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