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SPE-185574-MS

Investigation on the Impact of Voidage Replacement Ratio and Other


Parameters on the Performances of Polymer Flood in Heavy Oil Based on
Field Data

Eric Delamaide, IFP Technologies Canada Inc., and the EOR Alliance

Copyright 2017, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Latin America and Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 18-19 May 2017.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
Polymer flooding has now become a relatively well accepted method to increase production and recovery
in heavy oil fields. Numerous pilots have taken place these last few years and field expansions are currently
ongoing in several fields such as Pelican Lake (Canada), Marmul (Oman), Bohai Bay (China), Diadema
(Argentina) and Patos Marinza (Albania).
As a result of these recent developments, field data has now become available in large quantity and
can be used to provide guidance on the impact of various parameters on expected flood performances. For
instance, a comparison of primary, secondary and tertiary polymer flood performances based on the analysis
of several polymer flood patterns in Pelican Lake was presented in 2016 (Delamaide, 2016).
The present paper proposes to go further and to investigate the impact of parameters such as pore volume
injected, well length, well spacing or Voidage Replacement Ratio (VRR) on polymer flood performances,
based on data from fields in Canada and other parts of the world.
The performances of over 70 patterns belonging to several heavy oil polymer floods were analyzed
and the impact of VRR, well spacing, well length and other parameters on recovery was evaluated. The
calculations were performed using actual reservoir and production data whenever possible and published
data in other cases.
Despite a large scatter in the data due to the wide range of reservoir conditions investigated, it is possible
to distinguish interesting trends. For instance, higher VRR corresponds to lower recovery and recovery is
fairly well correlated to injected pore volumes.
This paper will provide guidance to engineers designing polymer floods in heavy oil fields, allowing to
adjust some of the design parameters to improve field response. In addition, the results can also be used
to benchmark reservoir simulation results which can often be too optimistic or to compare performances
of pilot projects in other fields.

Introduction
Once limited to light to medium oil reservoirs, polymer flooding has now become a well-accepted method
to increase or accelerate recovery in heavy oil reservoirs. Numerous pilots have taken place in the last 10
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years and several full field or large scale expansions are already under way. Since the reviews presented
by Delamaide in 2014 (Delamaide, 2014) and Saboorian-Jooybari and co-authors (Saboorian- Jooybari,
Dejam, & Chen, 2015), several more cases have been published including in Albania (Hernandez, 2015),
(Hernandez, 2016) and Colombia (Maya, et al., 2015).
Once the polymer has been selected in the laboratory and its rheological properties in reservoir cores have
been determined, reservoir simulations are usually used for the design of the injection (Delamaide, 2014)
and the production forecast used for the economic analysis of the project. However, reservoir simulations
are delicate for heavy oil especially when they are not calibrated using field data (Luo, Mohanty, Delshad,
& Pope, 2016); thus, it is useful to benchmark simulation results with results in analogue field projects.
The second motivation of this work was to study in more details the impact of several factors such as
Voidage Replacement Ratio (VRR) on recovery. The effect of VRR on waterflood has been studied by
several authors (Brice & Renouf, 2008), (Vittoratos & West, 2013), (Delgado, Vittoratos, & Kovscek, 2013),
(Brice, Ning, Wood, & Renouf, 2014), (Kim, Vittoratos, & Kovscek, 2016) who concluded that a VRR
< 1 is optimal for heavy oil. The main mechanism invoked is the liberation of solution gas resulting in a
foaming effect and triphasic relative permeabilities. This led San Blas and Vittoratos to wonder whether the
value of polymer is not overestimated in polymer flooding (San Blas & Vittoratos, 2014). Their argument
as we understand it is that polymer reduces injectivity thus forces the VRR below 1 and that the increase
in recovery is due more to the reduction of VRR than to the actual polymer viscosity effect. However, their
conclusions were based on reservoir simulations of a specific field, which would need to be verified at
the field scale. The interest of these parameters is clear: whereas operators have no influence on reservoir
heterogeneity or oil viscosity, VRR, spacing and the other factors can be adapted to increase production and
recovery, provided that some guidelines can be found.
With the multiplication of field projects, injection and production data are becoming available in large
numbers, in particular in Canada which is the home of several field pilots or large scale projects, and where
injection and production data are public. Using such public data Delamaide recently presented a comparison
of primary, secondary and tertiary polymer flood in a heavy oil reservoir (Delamaide, 2016). This allowed
to look at a large number of wells rather than be limited to average numbers from a few fields. In the present
paper, a similar methodology will be applied to study the effect of VRR, injected volumes, well length and
spacing on recovery.
The next section of the paper is devoted to the methodology used for the analysis, then short descriptions
of each case will be presented, then results will be presented and discussed.

Methodology
Fields and wells selections
We selected 6 fields where polymer flood pilots or large scale expansions have taken place and for which
sufficient data is available: Pelican Lake, Mooney, Seal and Medicine Hat (Glauconitic C pool) in Canada,
Tambaredjo in Suriname and Patos Marinza in Albania. Obviously, these fields have different geological,
reservoir and fluid characteristics which undoubtedly play a significant role in the responses to polymer
injection. However, the purpose of the paper is to study whether some general conclusions can be drawn on
VRR and other parameters, regardless of the reservoir of fluid characteristics.
To compare wells’ performances, injection and production data were normalized in terms of Pore
Volumes (PV) injected and Recovery Factor as a percentage of Original Oil in Place (OOIP). For the
Canadian fields under review, we based our calculations on confined patterns; in all these cases the injection
and production wells are horizontal so a pattern consists of one producer surrounded by two injectors.
Injection and production data is public in Canada so actual field rates were used. Injection rates for each
injection well was halved to account for the repeated pattern. Both PV and OOIP were calculated for each
well based on well length, well spacing, porosity, oil saturation and reservoir thickness. Well length and well
SPE-185574-MS 3

spacing are also public data and reservoir thickness was estimated based on maps published by the operators:
Canadian Natural Resources Limited (Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., 2016) and Cenovus (Cenovus
Energy, 2016) for Pelican Lake, BlackPearl for Mooney (BlackPearl Resources, 2009), Murphy Oil for
Seal (Murphy Oil Corporation, 2016) and Enerplus for Medicine Hat Glauconitic C (Batonyi, Thornburn,
& Molnar, 2016).
Porosity and oil saturations were considered constant for each reservoir (in Pelican Lake the average water
saturations provided by CNRL and Cenovus for the reservoir were used); although water saturation could
vary from pattern to pattern and could have an impact on individual wells results, we are more interested
in general trends so do not expect a significant impact on the overall conclusions. In Tambaredjo the 3
patterns used in this study were unconfined and composed entirely of vertical wells and pilot results were
published recently (Delamaide, Moe Soe Let, Bhoendie, Jong-A-Pin, & Paidin, 2016). In Patos Marinza,
detailed information was not available so we used the numbers for injected volumes and recovery factor
provided in the reference papers - this could also have an impact on the results and should be kept in mind
for the analysis.
For the Canadian cases, we discarded wells with too short or chaotic injection/production history (i.e.
too many interruptions) and wells in unbalanced patterns (such as when one injection well started injecting
much earlier than the other one).

Description of field cases


A short summary of each field will be provided in this section and their main reservoir characteristics can
be found in Table 1.

Table 1—Summary of relevant field characteristics

Reservoir Water # well


Average Average Permeability Oil viscosity
Project temperature Porosity (%) saturation patterns in
depth (m) net pay (m) (md) (cp)
(°C) (%) this study

Pelican Lake 300-450 12-17 1-9 28-32 300-5,000 30-40 800-80,000 59


Mooney 875-925 29 3-5 26 100-10,000+ 35 300-600 1
Seal 610 20 8.5 27-33 300-5,800 20-35 3,000-7,000 6
Medicine Hat 850 26 7 23 0-10,000 29 500-1,000? 2
Tambaredjo 385 36 7 33 3,000-6,000 25-29 400-600 3
Patos Marinza 1,200-1,300 40-42 4-12 15-29 100-2,500 17-35 600-1,600 4

Pelican Lake (Alberta, Canada)


The Pelican Lake field in northern Alberta, Canada, is the site of the largest polymer flood in heavy oil
currently taking place, with over 600 wells injecting polymer. The field and polymer flood expansion have
been described in several publications (Delamaide, Zaitoun, Renard, & Tabary, 2014), (Delamaide, Tabary,
Renard, & Dwyer, 2014), (Delamaide, 2016) so only the main points will be repeated here.
The reservoir is the Wabiskaw formation belonging to the Upper Mannville Group of Lower Cretaceous
age; it is an extensive, thin (5 m average) prograding shoreface with excellent petrophysical properties
– average porosity of 30% and permeability up to 5,000 mD. Oil is very viscous, with viscosity ranging
between 800 to 80,000 cp although the viscosity in the main areas targeted by polymer is in the 1,500 –
10,000 cp range.
Due to the thin pay the field has been developed exclusively with horizontal wells; the wells used for
the polymer flood are arranged in line drive patterns with an injection well alternating with a production
well. In some patterns polymer injection was initiated right away while in others it was implemented either
in secondary or tertiary conditions.
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Because this is the largest polymer flood project by number of wells, it is the source of most of the data.
Among the patterns included in the study, some have been produced under primary polymer injection (i.e.
polymer injection started at the same time or even before production), others under secondary or tertiary
conditions. In addition, some of the wells have been drilled on reduced spacing (50 m only between injection
and production wells) because they are located in higher oil viscosity areas (over 5,000 cp). Selected patterns
are from various parts of the field to provide a wide range of reservoir and fluid conditions.

Mooney (Alberta, Canada)


The Mooney field is also located in Northern Alberta in Canada and produces from the shallow marine
Bluesky formation (early Cretaceous).
The thin reservoir (up to 5 m thick, average thickness 2.5 m) is composed of semi-consolidated shoreface
sandstone with excellent reservoir characteristics: average porosity of 26% (varying between 23% and 31%),
average permeability of 3 darcies with a maximum of 10 darcies (BlackPearl Resources, 2009), (Delamaide,
Bazin, Rousseau, & Degre, 2014), (Watson, Trahan, & Sorensen, 2014). Oil viscosity varies between 300 to
600 cp at reservoir conditions. Like Pelican Lake, the field has been developed exclusively with horizontal
wells due to the thin pay. Wells are also arranged in line drive patterns.
A polymer pilot was initiated in 2008 in a pattern comprised of 2 injection wells and 3 production wells
(Delamaide, Bazin, Rousseau, & Degre, 2014). This was followed in 2011 by a large-scale ASP project
(Watson, Trahan, & Sorensen, 2014). For this study, we have used the confined well from the original
polymer flood pilot.

Seal (Alberta, Canada)


The Seal field located in the Peace River Oil Sands Region in northern Alberta is producing from the Bluesky
formation (Lower Cretaceous), a wave-dominated estuarine complex. The reservoir is a good quality rock
of 22-30% porosity and permeability up to 2,000 mD but pay is thin as in the previous projects, with a
maximum of 10 m (average thickness is much lower over the polymer flood area). Oil viscosity is very
high - dead oil viscosity is approximately 7,000-15,000 cp in the area of interest although the operator is
targeting the top of the reservoir where the oil viscosity is seemingly a little lower (Murphy Oil Corporation,
2016). Due to the thin pay and high oil viscosity, the reservoir has been developed by horizontal drilling.
A polymer flood pilot with three injectors and 4 producers (all 1,400 m long horizontal wells) was initiated
in October 2010 (Murphy Oil Company, 2011). Following positive results is was later expanded in 2012 and
2013, however the results were not as good as in the pilot and Phase 3 of the expansion has been cancelled
(Murphy Oil Corporation, 2016). For this study, we have used 6 wells both from the pilot and from Phase
1 of the expansion.

Medicine Hat (Alberta, Canada)


The Medicine Hat Glauconitic C pool located in south eastern Alberta produces from the Glauconitic
formation (Lower Cretaceous) deposited in a braided fluvial environment (Batonyi, Thornburn, & Molnar,
2016). The reservoir is thin (7 m on average) and quite heterogeneous with permeability up to 10,000 mD
(650 mD on average) and 23% porosity. It contains a 17-18 API gravity oil with a viscosity of 500-1,000
cp at reservoir temperature (public data).
The pool was developed with horizontal wells and a waterflood started in 2001, followed by a polymer
pilot in 2012. The polymer pilot consisted of 5 injection wells and 7 producing wells; some of the patterns
were under waterflood at the time while others were still producing under primary conditions. For this study,
we selected 2 wells, one producing under secondary and the second under tertiary polymer flood.
SPE-185574-MS 5

Tambaredjo (Suriname)
The Tambaredjo field has been described in several publications, including the recent papers by Delamaide
and co-workers (Delamaide, Moe Soe Let, Bhoendie, Jong-A-Pin, & Paidin, 2016), (Delamaide, Moe Soe
Let, Bhoendie, Paidin, & Jong-A-Pin, 2016). The field is producing from the T- sand reservoir, part of
the Lower Saramacca Member of the Saramacca formation of Paleocene age. It is composed of vertically
stacked sand bodies deposited in a fluvial-estuarine and shallow marine environment. The T1 sand which
is the main reservoir is composed of unconsolidated sands of high porosity (33% average) and very high
permeability of 3 to over 10 Darcies. Reservoir heterogeneity is relatively high due to the depositional
environment and the Dykstra-Parsons coefficient is 0.78. Maximum reservoir thickness can reach up to 14
m. The oil is heavy with an initial viscosity which varies between 650 - 1,100 cP at reservoir conditions.
The field has been developed using vertical wells of which over 1,000 have been drilled on a 200 m
spacing. Primary recovery has been relatively high probably due to strong compaction but a polymer flood
pilot was initiated in the southern part of the field in 2008 to increase recovery. It consisted in 3 inverted 5-
spot patterns on a shorter spacing. The results of the pilot have been presented recently by Delamaide and
co-workers (Delamaide, Moe Soe Let, Bhoendie, Jong-A-Pin, & Paidin, 2016), (Delamaide, Moe Soe Let,
Bhoendie, Paidin, & Jong-A-Pin, 2016). For this study, we have used the 3 patterns (instead of individual
wells) because data were available in the cited papers.

Patos Marinza (Albania)


The Patos Marinza field is the largest onshore field in Europe and has been producing since 1928
(Hernandez, Estrada, Davis, Deren, & Hallman, 2015). The reservoir is composed of several zones that
consist in multiple stacked sands deposited during the Upper Miocene in a shallow marine environment.
The main reservoir is the Lower Driza formation. Net pay is 4-12 m, and the petrophysical properties of
the reservoir are good with a porosity of 21-26% and a permeability of up to 2,000 mD. The Lower Driza
formation contains a heavy oil of 8-10 API with a live oil viscosity of 600 to 1,600 cp in reservoir conditions.
The field was initially developed with vertical wells until horizontal wells were introduced in the 2000s’.
More recently, a polymer flood pilot composed of 3 injection and 4 production wells, all horizontal, was
initiated in 2013. The injection patterns consist of alternating injection and production wells. Following
an initial success, it was later expanded to over 50 patterns in total (Hernandez, 2016). For this study, we
selected 4 patterns for which injection and production data were available.
As shown in Table 1 in total 75 well patterns were included in this work.

Results
Recovery factor vs. injected volume
Figure 1 shows a plot of recovery factor vs. cumulative injection for Pelican Lake and the other fields. As
can be seen from the figure, there is a large scatter in the data, which is not surprising given the range of oil
viscosity, well length and reservoir properties. The data also mixes injection under primary, secondary and
tertiary conditions. However, we can observe, first that the data from the other fields is in good agreement
with the data from Pelican Lake, which means that Pelican Lake is not biased one way or the other. Second,
except for 3 outliers, recovery increases with injected volumes within a well-defined trend materialized by
two red lines in Figure 1. These red lines represent a potential envelope for polymer flood results in heavy
oil; with their help, we can estimate that at 1 PV injected, recovery would range between 16% OOIP and
43% OOIP. Unfortunately, there are few data points available at higher volumes injected so the range of
potential recovery is wide.
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Figure 1—Recovery factor vs. cumulative injection

If we neglect the 3 obvious outliers, average recovery at 1 PV injected is estimated at 23% OOIP to
29% OOIP with a logarithmic (R2 = 0.459) or linear correlation (R2 = 0.412) respectively (not shown on
the figure).
Although the number of wells and fields presented here is limited, we believe that they represent a good
range of what could be expected from a polymer flood in a heavy oil reservoir. Thus, these plots can be
used to benchmark reservoir simulation results and pilot performances in other heavy oil fields.
Figure 2 shows the same data but split into primary, secondary and tertiary polymer injection to compare
the respective performances of the 3 methods and some interesting trends emerge.

Figure 2—Recovery factor vs. cumulative fluid injected for primary, secondary and tertiary polymer injection
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Few wells producing under primary production have long enough production history (all the wells in
the figure are from Pelican Lake) but for the ones available, the correlation between recovery factor and
cumulative fluid (in that case: polymer) injected is linear (R2 = 0.50). It must be noted that the well with the
lowest recovery produced at high WOR from the very beginning - a rare occurrence in this field. Recovery
is good in general; Delamaide (Delamaide, 2016) showed that in the case of primary polymer injection,
pressure and therefore production can remain fairly high and stable over several years.
Secondary production results are more scattered with two clear outliers; the data is from Pelican Lake,
Tambaredjo, Mooney, Medicine Hat and Patos Marinza. If we except the outliers, the correlation coefficient
R2 equals 0.53 (log relation).
Tertiary production results are also well grouped except for one outlier; all the data is from Pelican Lake
except for one point from the Medicine Hat pool, which makes it difficult to generalize the conclusions. In
any case if the outlier is removed the correlation coefficient R2 equals 0.62 (linear relation).
With the limitations outlined above, it appears that primary and secondary polymer injection are more
efficient than tertiary injection, because they achieve the same recovery with less fluid injection. This
confirms the results previously presented by Delamaide (Delamaide, 2016); in the following sections we
will try to investigate the reasons for this.

Impact of VRR
VRR is an important parameter under the control of the operator and could potentially be used to increase
recovery if its effect can be understood. As mentioned in the introduction, some authors have been
advocating producing at VRR < 1 in order to improve recovery in heavy oil reservoirs waterfloods (Brice &
Renouf, 2008), (Vittoratos & West, 2013), (Brice, Ning, Wood, & Renouf, 2014). San Blas and Vittoratos
(San Blas & Vittoratos, 2014) also suggested that the viscosity effect of polymer is not as important as it
seems and that the fact that most polymer floods are operated at VRR below 1 is responsible for the good
results obtained with polymer flood.
Figure 3 shows the plot of Recovery factor vs. VRR for Pelican Lake and the other fields except Patos
Marinza (due to lack of data). Again, the data for the other fields is fairly consistent with the Pelican Lake
data. Although there are large variations in particular for a VRR between 1 and 2 vol./vol., the trend is
unmistakable: the recovery factor tends to decrease as the VRR increases. The correlation coefficient R2
is 0.47 (power law).

Figure 3—Recovery factor vs. Voidage Replacement Ratio


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Figure 4 shows the same data as Figure 3 but separates the data into primary, secondary and tertiary
polymer flood.

Figure 4—Recovery factor vs. Voidage Replacement Ratio for Primary, Secondary and Tertiary polymer injection

These two figures suggest that the polymer floods in heavy oil examined in this study are usually operated
at high VRR - mostly above 1. This is contrary to the assumption made by San Blas and coworkers discussed
in our introduction (San Blas & Vittoratos, 2014).
As shown in Figure 3, operating at VRR > 1 is not a practice limited to Pelican Lake; it appears due to 1)
the generally low productivity of the wells resulting from the high viscosity of the oil compared to the much
higher injectivity even with polymer and 2) to the practices of operating at maximum wellhead injection
pressure which may be well above initial reservoir pressure.
Figure 5 re-plots the data from Figure 4 for VRR < 2 on 3 separate figures for visual ease.

Figure 5—Recovery factor vs. VRRfor primary, secondary and tertiary polymer flood

For primary polymer injection, the only data point with a VRR below 1 lies in the middle of the recovery
range.
For secondary polymer injection, the data points with a VRR below 1 correspond to high recovery.
SPE-185574-MS 9

For tertiary polymer injection, there is only one data point with a VRR below 1 and it corresponds to
the top recovery.
Figure 6 shows a plot of Recovery factor vs. cumulative fluid injected for various ranges of VRR to
better appreciate the impact of VRR; it confirms that in general a VRR below 1 corresponds to the highest
Recovery Factors, while a VRR above 2 corresponds to the lowest.

Figure 6—Recovery factor vs. cumulative fluid injected for various ranges of VRR

The situation is not as clear when VRR is between 1 and 2, and Figure 7 plots the same data as in Figure
6 but only for VRR between 1 and 1.5 for better clarity. As can be seen from the figure, there is no clear
difference between the two.

Figure 7—Recovery factor vs. cumulative fluid injected for VRR between 1 and 1.5
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Within the limits of our data, it might look from these simple observations that operating at VRR below is
beneficial for recovery, which agrees with the recommendations of Vittoratos and other workers. However,
one wonders about the real cause and effect: in other words, is recovery good when VRR is low, or is VRR
low because recovery is good? Consider this: as suggested before by Delamaide (Delamaide, 2016) and as
will be confirmed later in this study, polymer flood under primary and secondary conditions operates for
long periods of time at Water Oil Ratio equal to or below 1; this means that the viscosity of the produced fluid
is high, much higher than the viscosity of the injected polymer. Given that injection is usually performed
at maximum injection pressure rather than controlled by VRR, low VRR wells usually correspond either
to wells with long primary production history or to high productivity wells; in both cases recovery would
be high. Wells with short production history or poor productivity will not be able to accommodate large
volumes of injected fluid and as a result VRR will be high. Indeed, we confirmed that most of the wells
with high recovery and VRR < 1 in our samples had very high primary production.
Thus, we are still unclear on the impact of VRR on the recovery. Evidently, a very high VRR (say above
2) is indicative of some issue in the reservoir such as fluid losses outside of pattern and thus a bad sign for
recovery. A VRR below 1 may be the sign of high productivity and/or high primary recovery. For the rest,
when VRR is between 1 and 2, Figure 8 suggests that there is absolutely no relationship between recovery
and VRR, at least in our dataset.

Figure 8—Recovery Factor vs. Voidage Replacement Ratio

San Blas and Vittoratos suggest that operating at VRR below 1 allows the "reservoir pressure to drop
below the bubble point, which activates several mechanisms such as rock compaction and fluid expansion
[…]". While we agree that these mechanisms are important, we remark that in our data, polymer flood
patterns operated under primary conditions (i.e. polymer injection starting without any period of primary
production and thus which do not activate these mechanisms) mostly have VRR > 1 (Figure 4) and exhibit
some of the highest recoveries. This contradicts San Blas and Vittoratos’ theory. Still our dataset is limited
and more data specially at VRR < 1 would be useful to draw more definite conclusions.
SPE-185574-MS 11

Water Oil Ratio


Water Oil Ratio vs. injected volume. Figure 9 shows a plot of Water Oil Ratio (WOR) as a function of
cumulative fluid injected for Pelican Lake and the other fields (Tambaredjo is excluded because the data is
not public). The other fields are somewhat at the extremes in terms of WOR, with Pelican Lake in the middle.

Figure 9—Water Oil Ratio vs. Cumulative fluid injected for Pelican Lake and other fields

Figure 10 shows the same data as Figure 9 but separated into primary, secondary and tertiary polymer
injection. Within the limits of our dataset, primary injection appears to result in the lowest WOR. As
far as secondary and tertiary injection are concerned, the analysis is difficult since most secondary data
corresponds to less than 0.2 PV injected, while tertiary corresponds to more than 0.2 PV injected. The
secondary points in Pelican Lake with a WOR over 1 correspond to the shorter spacing/higher oil viscosity.
Based on the available data it is difficult to conclude anything further.

Figure 10—Water Oil Ratio as a function of Cumulative fluid injected


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Water Oil Ratio as a function of Recovery Factor. Figure 11 shows the WOR vs. recovery factor for
Pelican Lake and other fields (again without Tambaredjo). As in Figure 9, the other fields are at the extreme
range while the Pelican Lake data is in the middle.

Figure 11—WOR vs Recovery factor for Pelican Lake and other fields

Figure 12 plots WOR vs. recovery factor for the three injection methods and clearly shows that in general
for a given recovery factor, tertiary polymer injection results in much higher WOR than either primary or
secondary polymer injection, at least in Pelican Lake. For the other fields, it seems that the results are very
field-dependent.

Figure 12—Water Oil Ratio vs. Recovery factor


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Comparison between waterflood and polymer flood


Figure 2 indirectly provides some comparison between polymer injection (represented by primary and
secondary injection data) and waterflood; indeed, in most of our tertiary polymer injection cases, polymer
injection started quite late so a large part of the performances of these wells is representative of waterflood
response. As described above, the figure suggests that for a given volume of fluid injected (water or polymer)
recovery factor is higher for secondary and primary injection (i.e. only polymer) than with waterflood or
tertiary polymer flood. Figure 12 also showed how tertiary polymer flood or waterflood operates at much
higher WOR.
In order to provide additional comparison, Figure 13 compares the data from this work to the data
presented by Beliveau for waterflood in viscous oil reservoirs (Beliveau, 2009); for the comparison to be
fair we only used the fields in the Beliveau dataset which have an oil viscosity above 300 cp. Note that the
data from Beliveau relates to fields rather than to individual patterns like in this study.

Figure 13—Comparison of polymer flood data (this work) to data for waterflood in heavy oil from Beliveau (Beliveau, 2009)

Although the comparison is made difficult by the fact that most patterns in our study have seen less than
1 Hydrocarbon Pore Volume (HCPV) injected while for Beliveau most fields have seen more than 1, the
waterflood data from Beliveau appears consistent with the tertiary polymer flood data from our study. The
two red lines in the figure show the general trend for tertiary polymer flood and waterflood. In addition,
there is a clear separation between primary and secondary polymer flood data on one hand, and waterflood
and tertiary polymer flood on the other, materialized by the upper red line in Figure 13. This confirms
that polymer injection in primary and secondary conditions is more efficient than simple waterflood (and
polymer flood in tertiary conditions) because comparable recovery can be achieved for smaller volumes
of fluid injected. This is of course a confirmation of a well-established theory, but it is always comforting
when theory is confirmed by field results.

Influence of other parameters


We have investigated the impact of well length (Figure 14) as well as spacing (Figure 15) on the recovery
factor for all the fields except Tambaredjo (which uses vertical wells) and have found no correlation.
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Figure 14—Recovery factor vs. well length

Figure 15—Recovery factor vs. well spacing

Figure 16 shows the Recovery factor vs. cumulative fluid injected for the high viscosity wells in our data
set (in Pelican Lake and Seal) and the rest of the data. Not surprisingly higher oil viscosity appears to result
in lower recovery although this is clearly not the only factor at work.
SPE-185574-MS 15

Figure 16—Recovery factor vs. cumulative fluid injected for low and high viscosity oil

The best correlation we have been able to establish is between Recovery factor and cumulative fluid
injected/VRR (correlation coefficient R2 equals 0.704) (Figure 17).

Figure 17—Recovery factor vs. cumulative fluid injected/VRR

Figure 18 shows the same data but split into primary, secondary and tertiary polymer injection as
usual. Similarly to what has been observed so far, tertiary polymer recovery is mostly below primary and
secondary.
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Figure 18—Recovery factor vs. Cumulative fluid injected/VRR for Primary, Secondary and Tertiary polymer injection

Conclusions
In this paper, we have used injection and production data from patterns in 6 heavy oil fields (75 patterns in
total) under polymer flood to try and understand some of the controlling factors for the process.
Clearly our data has limitations due in particular to the number of samples, so conclusions are not
definitive and should be further confirmed (or not) with additional data from field tests. However, with these
limits in mind, we can conclude the following:

• In most cases Pelican Lake data appears to be average compared to the data from other fields,
which suggests that it is representative and does not introduce excessive bias in the data.
• Recovery increases with injected volumes in a limited range; we can estimate that at 1 PV injected,
recovery ranges between 16% OOIP and 43% OOIP. In addition, average recovery at PV injected
is estimated at 23% OOIP to 29% OOIP with a logarithmic (R2 = 0.459) or linear correlation (R2 =
0.412). We suggest that this is representative of what can be achieved by polymer flood in heavy
oil reservoirs.
• The impact of VRR on recovery has been studied; while a VRR below 1 generally corresponds to
a high recovery and conversely, a very high VRR (say above 2) is indicative of some issue in the
reservoir and thus a bad sign for recovery, we suggest that the VRR is the consequence rather than
the cause of the recovery. When the VRR is between 1 and 2, there is absolutely no relationship
between recovery and VRR, at least in our dataset.
• For a given recovery factor, tertiary polymer injection results in much higher WOR than either
primary or secondary polymer injection, at least in Pelican Lake. For the other fields, it seems that
the results are very field-dependent.
• Our dataset for tertiary polymer injection appears consistent with Beliveau (Beliveau, 2009) data
for waterflood in heavy oil with an oil viscosity above 300 cp; primary and secondary perform
better than tertiary polymer injection.
• Finally, there is no obvious link between spacing, well length and recovery, which suggests that
other more important factors (permeability? oil viscosity? polymer properties?) are the controlling
parameters.
SPE-185574-MS 17

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