The glossary is a living growing list of important E&P terms and require continual enhancements. If you would like to contribute to the glossary send an email to petrowiki(at)spe.org.

The glossary is a living growing list of important E&P terms and require continual enhancements. If you would like to contribute to the glossary send an email to petrowiki(at)spe.org.

The schematics at the bottom of Figure 1.3 illustrate the pore-level recovery mechanisms discussed earlier (Figure 1.2). At the end of the waterflood, residual oil is a discontinuous phase that occupies approximately 40% of the pore space. Early in the miscible flood [3.0 to 3.5 total pore volumes (PV) injected], some of this oil has been miscibly displaced by solvent from the higher-permeability flow path (on the pore scale). However, some oil also has been initially bypassed by solvent. Note that this bypassing at the pore level is much different from solvent bypassing, which can occur at the field scale because of larger-scale reservoir heterogeneities.

Miscible flooding is presently the most-commonly used approach in enhanced oil recovery. Miscible flooding is a general term for injection processes that introduce miscible gases into the reservoir. A miscible displacement process maintains reservoir pressure and improves oil displacement because the interfacial tension between oil and water is reduced. A decision to implement a miscible flood in a particular field will usually consist of a sequential approach. First is the screening stage.

Nitrogen miscible injection is a process whereby nitrogen gas is injected into an oil reservoir above the Minimum Misciblity Pressure (MMP) to create a miscible vaporizing drive and increase the oil recovery factor. Discovered in 1970, the Jay field[1][2] produces primarily from a Jurassic-aged Smackover carbonate that is heavily dolomitized and has complex lithology. The entire pay interval was cored in virtually all the wells to provide an accurate geologic description and aid in unitization efforts. The field was unitized in 1973, and waterflooding began 4 days later to arrest pressure decline. Miscible N2 injection was started in 1981.

This page provides an overview of Pulsed-Neutron-Lifetime (PNL) devices and their applications. They probe the formation with neutrons but detect gamma rays. Chlorine has a particularly large capture cross section for thermal neutrons. If the chlorine in the formation brine dominates the total neutron capture losses, a neutron-lifetime log will track chlorine concentration and, thus, the bulk volume of water in the formation. For constant porosity, the log will track water saturation, Sw.

The following 16 pages are in this category, out of 16 total.

Kirkuk is a supergiant oil reservoir located in Iraq. Kirkuk began production in 1934, and 2 billion bbl of oil were produced before water injection was implemented in 1961. From 1961 to 1971, 3.2 billion bbl of oil were produced under pressure maintenance by waterdrive using river water. The 1971 production rate was approximately 1.1 million barrels of oil per day (BOPD). Since then, the field has continued to produce large volumes of oil by voidage-replacement water injection; however, few production details for recent years appear in the technical literature.

San Andres and Clearfork are two carbonate reservoir intervals that are present over a considerable area of the Permian Basin in west Texas. These reservoirs (e.g., Wasson, Slaughter, Seminole) contain several billion bbl of approximately 30 API oil. They are very-layered, heterogeneous carbonates and dolomites that have large variation in permeability from layer to layer. Interestingly, because of the complex hydrocarbon-accumulation history of this basin, much of this area has an underlying interval that contains residual oil saturation. Most of these reservoirs were discovered in the late 1930s and the 1940s.

The value and importance of tracer tests are broadly recognized. Tracer testing has become a mature technology, and improved knowledge about tracer behavior in the reservoir, improved tracer analysis, and reduction of pitfalls have made tracer tests reliable. Many tracer compounds exist; however, the number of suitable compounds for well-to-well tracers is reduced considerably because of the harsh environment that exists in many reservoirs and the long testing period. Radioactive tracers with a half-life of less than one year are mentioned only briefly in this chapter because of their limited applicability in long-term tests. Tracers may be roughly classified as passive or active.