Water Flooding for Variation of Petrophysical Properties in Zubair Reservoir/West Qurna Oil Field
Author(s):
Salem Jawad Kadum Alhamd, Mohammed Abdulmunem Abdulhameed, Maaly Salah Asad
Affiliation(s):
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Engineering College, Kerbala University, 56001Kerbala, Iraq
Corresponding Author Email:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This paper illustrates a study on the damages of the petrophysical properties, in particular, the porosity and permeability as a result of the flooding of water in West Qurna field . Five core samples of sandstone were provided from the formation of Al-Zubair in West Qurna field at depths (3219-3246) meters by the South Oil Company. The plugs were sectioned, then cleaned and dried, after which the petrophysical properties of rocks such as porosity and permeability were tested by many devices such as Gas Prosimeter, Liquid, and Gas Permeameter, Scanning Electron Microscopy, GeoSpec2 apparatus, and OFITE Spectral Gamma Ray Logger apparatus. Gas and liquid permeability were detected by the Gas Permeameter, liquid Permeameter, and GeoSpec2 instrument. Tests for porosity and permeability were performed before the flooding by gas, liquid, and GeoSpec2 devices, where the results of gas devices showed higher values than the results of liquid and GeoSpec2 devices due to the possibility of gas slipping, and therefore the gas results were corrected to ignore the effect of gas slipping using the Klink Enberg correction. The injection water was supplied from Dammam Formation by the South Oil Company. It was analyzed by Nahran Omar Laboratory / Basra. As the results show that it has very high salinity. A flooding system was devised to study the permeability damage resulting from the water injection. Various pore volumes were injected through the plugs at three interstitial velocities to show the influence of pore injected and choosing the best velocity for flooding. The best velocity inside the sample that causes less damage was the high velocity which is 627ft/day. The percentage of damage ratio was determined for each core sample at three velocities. It was low at a high velocity. By comparing all the results of permeability before and after the water flooding process, it was clear a significant reduction in the permeability values. Injecting a large amount of water over a long period of time is an effective method enhanced oil recovery methods for reservoirs for Al-Zubair in West Qurna field.