Parameters for Assessing Oil Reservoir Water Flooding Additives

Abstract

This paper is concerned with deriving parameters for assessing the effectiveness of fluid additives to improve water flooding during enhanced oil recovery. We focus particularly on the use of rheological modifiers, which do not show monotonic behavior with the shear rate within the rock pores. We derive figures of merit based on (1) relative retardation in high and low permeability rock, (2) profile flattening, and (3) injectivity index. Only the last of these provides a measure of water flood profile improvement while maintaining sufficient fluid flow and production levels.