Clogging of induced fracture to increase waterflood sweep efficiency

Abstract

Waterflooding of low-permeable reservoirs with high pressure is often accompanied by formation of induced fracture. The positive side of this process is an injectivity increase and oil production rise. However, when these fractures approach producing wells, an early water breakthrough occurs, and high productivity channels are formed between the injection and producing wells. The technology of fracture clogging, for example, by suspension composition injection into an injection well, allows reducing the length of the fracture. The paper considers the problem of the fracture size reducing process on the waterflood sweep efficiency. The example of a reverse five–point waterflood pattern was investigated. In the basic calculation run, fracture length was constant during all process. The run with transformable fracture length is compared with the basic one. The results of calculations showed that the process of waterflooding after fracture impact could be divided into the following stages. The first one, which follows immediately after the fracture clogging, demonstrates a water cut decrease and an oil production rate increase. The second, in which the oil production declines below the base variant. On the third stage, there is a low, but long-term increase in oil production due to increased waterflood sweep efficiency. The authors established that monitoring of induced fractures length is relevant, since timely fractures clogging allows to increase oil production after the well treatment and to incline the oil recovery coefficient through increasing waterflood sweep efficiency.