Simulation of Low Salinity Waterflooding in One of the Iranian Oil Reservoirs

The rising global oil need and reducing oil production has resulted in the present of new methods to extract oil from the oil fields. The production of oil and gas from oil and gas reserves is a complex process. In a conventional water flooding, water, typically sea-water is injected on a macroscopic scale into the hydrocarbon layers to move the oil from injection wells towards a production well.Since the 1970s oil companies have explored various procedures to improve low recovery rate of conventional waterflooding by injecting various types of additives together with the water. More recently, it was discovered that the recovery rate can also be increased by desalinating the sea-water before injecting it into the ground.The main objective of this article is comparing the effect of low salinity against high salinity waterflooding. We first illustrate why study on Low salinity waterflooding is important. Then the paper progresses by briefly explanation of Low-Salinity Mechanisms in Carbonate reservoirs as the main type of Iranian reservoirs. After that the paper will clarify the Advantages and challenges of Low Salinity water flooding. We subsequently attempt, with a review of the literature on studies related to low salinity waterflooding. Then paper presents a simulation study of the low-salinity effect in one of the Iranian reservoirs. The simulation results show that the LSWF can enhance the oil recovery in the under study reservoir. The conclusion based on simulation results are presented in the last section of article.

Keywords:

Low Salinity , field case study , EOR , Waterflooding