Journal of Porous Media

THE STUDY ON THE DISTRIBUTION LAW OF INTERWELL PRESSURE GRADIENT CONSIDERING THE INFLUENCE OF PROFILE CONTROL AND WATER SHUTOFF

Краткое описание

Profile modification is an efficient method used to improve the areal sweep efficiency of water flooding. An accurate description of the pressure gradient between the injection and production wells is important for selecting the proper type of plugging agents and optimizing their dosages during the profile modification process. Currently, the pressure gradient between the injection and production wells is evaluated based on the model, which describes the flow of compressible fluids in porous media. Such a model can take the reservoir heterogeneity into account; however, the effect of profile control and water shutoff is not considered. The computation complexity is greatly increased due to the plugging agent's propagation into channel zones. In this article, a two-dimensional plate model with 64 pressure measurement probes is used to study the pressure gradient during the water flooding stage and after profile control and water shutoff. A chemical-flooding compositional simulation model is used to calculate the interwell pressure gradient, which takes into account the high permeable zone and profile modification. The influence of different geological conditions and operating conditions on the interwell pressure gradient is analyzed. As demonstrated in this article, the plugging agent slug sustained the major pressure drop between the injection and production wells, and the interwell pressure gradient was influenced much more by profile modification than by the permeability of the high permeable zone. The range of fewer than 10 m from the bottom of the well is the main pressure drop zone. It is recommended to inject a 10-m displacement slug after injecting the major gels.