Project Participant: Chevron U.S.A.

Project Contact: T. W. Patzek, 510-643-5834, patzek@patzek.berkeley.edu

Objective: To develop a process model-driven (smart), multiscale approach to the management and control of large waterfloods.

A successful waterflood depends on the proper operation of individual wells, and on maintaining the balance between water injection and production - pattern-by-pattern - over the entire project or field. If individual wells in every pattern are not balanced properly, the volumetric sweep by water deteriorates and wells may fail. The difficulty in balancing waterflood is further aggravated in a tight rock, dolomite, chalk, or diatomite, where injector-producer linkages, uncontrolled hydrofracture growth, and early water breakthrough in thief layers are encountered.

Therefore, to manage a waterflood successfully, one needs to control where the injected water goes in each pattern, project, section, and over the entire waterflood area. The relevant length-scales vary from tens of feet to ten miles, and there is no uniform approach to quantifying the volumetric sweep by water.

One of the many dual-string water injection controllers in ChevronTexaco's Lost Hills, CA, waterflood. Note the uplink antenna. The controller software has been developed by UC Oil/LBNL working with ChevronTexaco.