Interwell Tracer Tests To Optimize Operating Conditions for a Surfactant Field Trial: Design, Evaluation, and Implications

Abstract

Summary: Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) by surfactant flooding is the key to unlocking the next billion barrels of oil for Minas, one of the world's largest waterflood fields. An interwell tracer test (ITT-1) was performed before a surfactant field trial (SFT) to ensure well injectivity, demonstrate pattern confinement, quantitatively describe interwell connectivity and sweep efficiency, and provide sufficient data for reservoir evaluation. The tracer test was designed by numerical simulation. The test started in November 2009 and was terminated in February 2010. Analytical interpretation based on moment analysis and numerical reservoir simulations was conducted to evaluate ITT-1 results. Interpretation of the test results indicated various operational and reservoir properties that would have likely led to failure of the surfactant pilot. Hydraulic control of the SFT pattern was not achieved; in fact, less than 20% of one tracer was recovered. Many small-scale heterogeneities were identified that led to a lower-than-expected reservoir volume contacted. Unexpected communication between the target sand and the underlying sands outside the pattern also contributed to low tracer recovery and low swept volume. The tracer test was history matched, and additional features were incorporated in the reservoir model, and a new tracer design (ITT-2) was optimized to correct low sweep efficiency and poor hydraulic control. New information from ITT-2 will be used to further optimize operating conditions for SFTs. Failure to conduct the tracer tests would have likely revealed these unfavorable reservoir and operational conditions during the SFT. Had oil recovery been poor (because of low swept volume), it would have erroneously been attributed to a poor SFT rather than to the true causes. ITT-1 is considered successful because it allowed us to redesign injection/hydraulic control during the relatively inexpensive tracer test and thus evaluate the surfactant trial without bias.