Experimental Investigation on Injection and Production Pattern in Fractured-Vuggy Carbonate Reservoirs

• Published in: Energies (Basel) Vol. 13; no. 3; p. 603
• Main Authors: He, Juan, Li, Aowei, Wu, Shanshan, Tang, Ruixue, Lv, Dongliang, Li, Yongren, Li, Xiaobo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 2020
• Subjects: Caves; Connectivity; Design; Flooding; flow channel; Flow channels; fractured-vuggy reservoirs; Fractures; Gravitation; Gravity; gravity differentiation; Injection; injection and production pattern; Injection wells; Morphology; Oil; physical model; Production management; Reservoir management; Reservoirs; Shutdowns; Water flooding; water flooding effect; China
• ISSN: 1996-1073; 1996-1073
• DOI: 10.3390/en13030603

To constitute and adjust the injection and production pattern in fractured-vuggy reservoirs, we extracted twelve fractured-cave structures, fabricated them into physical models with acrylic plates, and performed experiments via these models. The results show that utilizing oil/water gravity segregation sufficiently and forming valid flow channels should be emphasized. Preferentially exploiting the reservoir body containing intermediate-scaled or large-scaled caves, arranging injection wells in fractures or small-scaled caves while placing production wells in large-scaled caves, and separately putting injection wells and production wells in low/high parts of an intermediate-scaled or large-scaled cave, were found to benefit oil/water gravity segregation and thus gain a better water flooding effect in these experiments. Experiments with combined models also figured out that, after adjusting the injection and production pattern, the valid flow channel newly formed must pass through caves containing enough residual oil to improve the water flooding effect and could be obtained by shutting down the old production well while adding a new production well, adding a new production well, or switching the production well into an injection well while adding a new production well. In the actual field, adjusting the well location and altering the flow channel were proposed to conduct together. This study may provide references on the production management of analogous reservoirs.