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SPE 166609

VRR < 1 Is Optimal for Heavy Oil Waterfloods


Vittoratos, E., consultant to BP and West, C.C., BP

Copyright 2013, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Offshore Europe Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition held in Aberdeen, UK, 36 September 2013.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to
reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract

Increasingly, the reservoirs remaining to be developed have lower gravity, particularly for the older offshore basins such as
the North Sea. Optimal waterflood VRR management will be the key to their economic success. Current industry paradigms
and regulatory mandates assume that the light oil practice of complete voidage replacement, VRR = 1, should be continued
for the heavy oil reservoirs to be waterflooded. Empirical data, laboratory experiments, and mathematical simulation
methods indicate, however, that for heavy oil waterfloods the optimal voidage replacement ratio (VRR) is less than
one. Analysis of empirical data from an Alaskan heavy oil reservoir (18 API) show that after water breakthrough, periods of
VRR < 1 are important for increased recovery. Laboratory data from an Alaskan heavy oil (12 API) waterflooded in a five
foot long big can show significantly higher recoveries with VRR < 1. Numerical simulations are directionally in agreement
with these empirical & laboratory observations even when only using conventional concepts.

Many more recovery mechanisms are activated with VRR < 1 than with VRR = 1. Some are readily understood with existing
conventional concepts. Common geological depositional environments do not permit complete waterflood sweep, and cul de
sacs of unswept oil are left behind that can only be depleted with the activation of solution gas drive by VRR < 1. Less
conventional concepts include the chemical changes that accompany pressure declines, that result in more surface activity
and increased in-situ emulsion multiphase flow, which may self-divert to increase waterflood conformance. The numerical
simulation of the VRR < 1 process is difficult and only a limited number of the mechanisms can be effectively modeled.
Nonetheless, directional trends have been identified.

Introduction

Waterflooding is the most important oil recovery process. Its development has been refined over the last one hundred years,
and considerable operational experience has been accumulated. Most of this experience, however, has been with low
viscosity, high API gravity oils from onshore developments. Increasingly the remaining oil resource to be developed is
offshore and heavy. Implicitly the industry assumes that waterflood practices & paradigms developed for onshore light oils
can be applied largely unmodified for offshore heavy oils. This paper questions these assumptions and proposes different
waterflood management practices.

A key characteristic of optimal economic offshore development are large well spacings, typically in the many hundreds of
acres per well or more. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes, however, have only been demonstrated to be effective for far
smaller well spacings. For some of the international oil companies (IOCs), the offshore fraction of production has become
quite large, reaching as much as 80% (Romer et al., 2012). Thus the EOR opportunities available for the IOCs have
increasingly become more complex and entail higher risk. Improved heavy oil waterflooding can become a highly leveraged
technology.

The large offshore well spacings drive the need to use as effectively and as much as possible the internal energy of the system
rather than rely solely on an external, surface imposed drive. The internal energy of the system can come from two sources:
aquifer support and the solution gas in the oil. In a conventional waterflood, the solution gas is not utilized; this paper will
argue that for optimal recovery it needs to be harnessed, particularly if the bubble point pressure of the oil is at or near the
reservoir discovery pressure. This is because the proportion of the connected reservoir volumes swept by water injection
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decreases with larger well spacings as the conformance often becomes channel like. Solution gas drive, on the other hand,
can be activated in all the connected reservoir volumes, and is far less sensitive to geological heterogeneity than an externally
imposed sweep. Furthermore, larger spacings increase the possible range of oil, water and mineralogical properties to be
encountered by any EOR chemical process, making it more difficult to design an effective chemical composition. As the
spacing increases, the utilization of energy from solution gas is relatively more robust than that from an externally imposed
process, whether conventional waterflooding or an EOR process.

The most enduring paradigm of conventional waterflooding is that the fluid volumes injected into the reservoir should equal
the volumes produced from the reservoir, all volumes calculated at reservoir pressure and temperature conditions:

voidage replacement ratio (VRR) = 1.

Under these conditions, no solution gas is released. This is mandated by several regulatory agencies. This paper proposes that
this is not optimal, particularly for heavy oils and offshore developments. Periods of VRR < 1 are beneficial and can
significantly increase recovery. We summarize our conceptual thoughts, and empirical and laboratory data in Fig. 1:

Fig. 1. Sparse empirical and laboratory data suggest that the optimal VRR for heavy oils may be less than one; for light oils,
VRR = 1 is optimal.

The first part of the paper will discuss some of the mechanisms of VRR < 1. The second part of the paper provides empirical,
laboratory and simulation data that support our proposal.

Mechanisms of VRR < 1

VRR < 1 activates many more recovery mechanisms than VRR = 1. VRR < 1 results in a pressure decline in the reservoir,
which if continued sufficiently long will drop the pressure below the bubble point of the oil, releasing solution gas to form a
third, gaseous, phase. Some of the more important mechanisms activated are:

(1) Flow interference between the three phases, which for some ratios of phases result in preferential oil flow;
(2) Displacement of oil from water unswept volumes of the reservoir (cul-de-sacs) into the flowing water paths
connecting the injectors with the producers;
(3) Pressure decline activated chemical changes in the water and oil resulting in changes to the multiphase flow with
emulsions, foams, and, possibly, particulate precipitation;
(4) Compaction drive increased oil recovery in some unconsolidated clastic reservoirs
(5) Reduction in residual oil saturation (Dyes, 1954).

None of the above mechanisms exist when VRR = 1. As a counterweight to these positive influences, VRR < 1 does possess
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some possibly negative attributes:


(1) Oil viscosity is increased when the pressure falls below the bubble point;
(2) Surface subsidence may result in wellbore and surface facility damages;
(3) Reservoir energy may be inefficiently lost through high gas production;
(4) Increased sand production may occur resulting in operational difficulties.

A full understanding of VRR < 1 encompasses almost all of reservoir engineering. This paper will focus on an overview of
the three most important recovery mechanisms, and summarize the empirical, laboratory and numerical simulation evidence
that VRR < 1 is the preferred waterflood management strategy, particularly for heavy oil waterfloods on large spacings.

Depletion from water unswept reservoir volumes (cul-de-sacs)

Waterfloods with VRR = 1 rarely sweep the entire connected reservoir volumes between injectors and producers. Channel
like communication paths often form between injectors and producers, resulting in poor displacement sweep of the oil from
the reservoir. We define connected as the reservoir volumes that are in pressure communication with at least one injector
and one producer. Though in pressure communication, some fraction of the reservoir volumes, however, may not be swept
by the injected water. A good analogue is the traffic flow through a suburban sub-division. Imagine the reservoir porosity to
consist of the main thoroughfares where entry and exit into and out of the sub-division may occur, along with the many cul-
de-sacs that branch off the main thoroughfares that do not permit the flow of through traffic (such volumes have also been
labelled as dead volumes). With VRR = 1, the main thoroughfares can be waterflooded but not the cul-de-sacs. The
connected cul-de-sacs, however, can be depleted with VRR < 1, as the pressure decline activates solution gas drive that
pushes oil from the cul-de-sacs to the main thoroughfares where it may be swept. In general, reservoir heterogeneity
influences depletion drive relatively little compared to waterflood drive.

A number of publications have identified and even quantified the unswept volumes during conventional waterflooding (VRR
= 1). It is remarkable and surprising that the usefulness of VRR < 1 in partially depleting the unswept cul-de-sacs was not
proposed or even identified. Yet these publications are very fundamental to our work for they calculate the unswept volumes
for a number of depositional environments the prize for VRR < 1.

For turbidite depositional environments, common in commercial offshore basins, the comprehensive connectivity study of
Alpak et al. (2010) is important for it illustrates both the usefulness and the limitations of current procedures. Alpak et al.
commence with a highly detailed geological description for a sector of a turbidite reservoir that is small enough to run
dynamic simulations to forecast the waterflood response and recovery. The gridding of the dynamic model was made
increasingly coarser (larger dimensions for the simulation reservoir blocks), while preserving the original total porosity of the
model, and dynamic simulations were then repeated. Larger recoveries were forecast by the coarser grids, and the
connectivity was defined by:

Connectivity = recovery with fine simulation grid / recovery with coarse simulation grid

Alpak et al. define the dead volumes (the cul-de-sac volumes in our terminology) as:

dead fractional volume = 1 connectivity.

Shale drapes reduce significantly the connectivity of a turbidite; with 60% drape coverage, as much as 30% or more of the
pore volume can be considered as dead end. It is important to note that this definition of connectivity could be more
descriptively called sweep connectivtiy, as distinct from pressure connectivity which would be larger, as Alpak et al.
comment: This example highlights the usefulness of dynamic information in assessing the risk of stratigraphic
compartmentalization. Because of stratigraphic dead-ends created by shales, large unwept reservoir sections remain
subsequent to the water breakthrough.

Thus for the more heterogeneous turbidite reservoirs, there is significant prize to go after with VRR < 1. By dropping the
pressure below the bubble point, solution gas drive can push oil into the swept connected volumes; if one assumes 10%
primary recovery in the dead end volumes, VRR < 1 may lead to an increased recovery of 3% or more of the OOIP (original
oil in place).

Though the Alpak et al. definition of dynamic connectivity is useful and insightful, their recommendation for using sector
derived dynamic connectivity as a substitute for explicit geological detail in a full scale dynamic simulation must be viewed
with some reservation, for it can lead to significant distortion of physics. Alpak et al. recommend that the dead end
volumes derived from the connectivity of fine grid sector models be incorporated into the coarse grids of full field dynamic
models by increasing the residual oil saturation of the rock relative permeability curves (pseudoization). This obscures,
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however, the possibility of increasing recovery with VRR < 1. Furthermore, history matching of reservoirs with significant
periods of VRR < 1 (which are not uncommon due to unplanned operational problems) would be distorted if the simulation
model pseudo replaces dead ends by increased residual oil saturation.

Connectivity has also been described in a mathematically different way by Nurafsa et al. (2006) for a fluvial depositional
environment . They used percolation theory to define the backbone porosity that is analogous to the main suburban
thoroughfares and the dangling ends that are analogous to the cul-de-sacs in the suburbia analogy. In their study, as much
as 40% of the pore volume was associated with the dangling ends. Streamline simulations indicated that the oil in the
dangling ends would not be swept. Though not proposed by Nurafsa et al., we believe that their work indicates that there
would be a significant prize for VRR < 1 for fluvial depositional environments.

The effective connectivity of a reservoir clearly is a function of the spacing of the wells. With increased density of drilling,
the connectivity will approach one as wells are drilled in former cul de sacs volumes permitting them to be water swept.
Thus in the limit of very small spacings, as may occur onshore in low cost development districts, the value of the VRR < 1
mechanism becomes inconsequential. Offshore, however, large well spacings are typical and the depletion of cul-de-sacs
with VRR < 1 is an important recovery mechanism.

Flow Interference Between the Three Phases

When a waterflood is operated with VRR = 1, only water and oil flow in the reservoir, except possibly in the immediate
vicinity of the producer where gas may also flow. For VRR < 1, however, a significant fraction of the reservoir volume may
have three phase flow water, oil and gas. Three phase flow is far more complicated than two phase flow, and there are only
a limited number of studies that have presented laboratory and empirical data to describe it. A number of mathematical
studies have made strides in the calculations of multiphase flow. The understanding of three phase flow effects is made even
more difficult because the multiphase flow can differ significantly depending on whether phases are increasing or decreasing
(Oak, 1990). Furthermore, most three phase flow studies were motivated by the desire to control the conformance of injected
gas in miscible floods, not an exsolved solution gas. For VRR < 1, the phase saturation history in different parts of the
reservoir could become quite complex.

Having expressed these reservations, there is reliable laboratory evidence to indicate that phases interfere with each during
flow: three-phase relative permeabilities to water, oil and gas are significantly lower than their corresponding two-phase
values (Shahverdi et al., 2011). For the case of gas, the three phase krg is reduced by an order of magnitude compared to the
two phase krg. Furthermore, the introduction of a gas phase may preferentially decreases water flow relative to oil flow. For
example, Jerauld (1997) in a study of Prudhoe Bay Ivishak cores observed that the ratio of the relative permeability of water
to that of oil could be decreased by several fold in the presence of small amounts of trapped gas (circa 10% of the saturation).
The experiments were designed to clarify a different process the injection of water along with miscible gas and they do
not represent the internal gas generation of VRR < 1. Nonetheless, to some extent, Jeraulds observations may be a general
result: the presence of gas slows down water flow and increases oil flow, resulting in increased water sweep of the reservoir
and increased oil recovery. Therefore the three phase flow created by the gas exsolution of VRR < 1 tends to retain gas &
water and produce oil.

Quantification of the above flow interference effects on oil recovery have been attempted by using mathematical algorithms
for three phase relative permeabilities that are derived from the far better understood and more easily measured two phase
relative permeabilities. Two approaches that of Stone (1973) and that of Baker (1988) are the most commonly used.
Though expedient for numerical simulations, accumulated evidence indicates that this approach has limited validity
(Shahverdi et al. 2011, Petersen et al., 2008). Nonetheless, only few studies can derive sufficient experimental three phase
relative permeability data (Petersen et al., 2008), and most simulation evaluations continue to rely on the use mathematical
algorithms such as those of Stone and Baker.

Delgado et al. (2013) performed numerical simulations to quantify the importance of three phase flow to increase oil recovery
by VRR < 1. The oil properties were of an 18 API Alaska North Slope sandstone reservoir whose VRR field performance had
been previously reported (Vittoratos et al., 2010). Delgado et al. found that the predicted oil recoveries were particularly
sensitive to the gas relative permeability. For relatively mobile gas with high gas relative permeabilities and small critical
saturation the introduction of the gas phase via VRR < 1 decreased the oil recovery. But with the low gas relative
permeabilities and larger critical gas saturations, say 0.05 or 0.1, VRR < 1 could significantly increase the oil recovery, by as
much as 25% OOIP. These simulations were performed on a core scale, and the absolute recovery numbers are of limited
applicability to commercial waterfloods; the trends, however, are believed to be of commercial relevance.

Chemical Changes Resulting in Emulsification and Foaming


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The decrease in pressure attendant to VRR < 1 disturbs the reservoirs thermodynamic equilibrium, and chemical changes in
the reservoir fluids may occur. These changes drive the system to be more surface active, significantly changing the
multiphase flow by forming foams and emulsions: the phases do not slip past each other, but embed within each other. In
particular, the increase in the water pH may stabilize emulsions (Goldszal et al., 2002), and aggregation of asphaltenes and
their migration to the gas-oil interface or water-oil interface may stabilize foam and emulsion formation. These mechanisms
are not in conventional reservoir simulation models. To some extent some of the flow physics relating to these mechanisms
can be approximately incorporated into conventional simulations by suppressing the relative permeability curves of water and
gas; this approach, however, does not describe the creation physics of emulsions and foams nor their complex non-linear flow
characteristics.

We illustrate conceptually the role of emulsification and foaming in Fig. 3. This figure is sketched from a photograph of a
present day fluvial environment. The wells are placed in the main channel; lateral channels would thus be unswept. Oil
foaming in the unswept lateral channels is needed to drive oil from the lateral channels into the water swept channel between
the injector and producer. Within the channel complex foamy emulsions form and flow:

Fig. 2. Fluvial depositional environment. VRR < 1 helps deplete volumes not swept by the water. Foaming in the cul de
sacs and emulsification in the main channel may occur for heavy oils.

There is empirical evidence that such foamy emulsion flows may be occur in-situ in waterflooded heavy oil reservoirs.
Vittoratos et. al (2006, 2010) have pointed out that heavy oil waterfloods sometimes exhibit a flow regime with a constant
water oil ratio near one for extended periods of time, and presented a number of examples. Though several explanations are
possible, the most likely is that the WOR ~ 1 regime represents the flow of water-in-oil emulsions. This flow regime slows
down water channeling and increases oil recovery.

Laboratory Waterflood Observations with VRR < 1

We have previously given interim results from an ongoing laboratory program to test VRR < 1 using a number of oils. In
these experiments, a very reproducible communication path was created in a five foot long big can and various VRR
strategies were tested after the commencement of water production from the production end of the can. The procedures and
results have been released in some detail for an 18 API Alaska North Slope oil (Vittoratos et al., 2011). The reproducibility of
the communication path is remarkable, and the large pore volume of the big can permit excellent mass balances of all three
phases including the gas. Thus the signal (role of VRR on recovery) to noise level for these experiments is exceptional. The
chosen design does have some limitations. The pseudo one dimensional shape of the big can would tend to underestimate the
importance of mechanisms that increase areal conformance such as polymer flooding. Furthermore, the shape also limits how
slow the fluids can be injected to avoid gas override and the creation of a top-down gas flood mechanism, whose importance
in the field would be far smaller than in the confined spaces of the big can.

For the 18 API oil, it was observed that VRR = 0.7 recovered more oil than VRR = 1.0 (conventional waterflood) or VRR = 0
(solution gas drive). This result was consistent with our expectations prior to the commencement of the experiments
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(Vittoratos et al., 2006). We were not able, however, to unequivocally deconvolve the active recovery mechanisms. Water-
in-oil emulsification was observed from the effluents of both experiments, but difficulties in distinguishing water droplets
from gas bubbles did not permit us to make quantitative comparisons of the mechanistic differences between the two runs.
We have also performed big can experiments with a 12 API live oil (~ 2,000 cp) from the Alaska North Slope. The oil
foams and we anticipated both foaming and emulsification to be active mechanisms. The procedures were similar to those
followed for the 18 API oil. Experiments were performed for VRR = 1, 0.7, 0.5 and 0.0. Again the runs with VRR < 1 were
superior to those of VRR = 1, with the outperformance of VRR < 1 being even more marked than for the 18 API oil,
consistent with our expectations. The effluents displayed considerable water-in-oil emulsification. The detailed results will be
released elsewhere.

In summary, laboratory experiments waterflooding a big can serve as a model of the channel-like communication paths that
tend to form in commercial heavy oil waterfloods. These experiments indicate that the continuation of VRR = 1 subsequent
to water breakthrough is not optimal and that a reduction of VRR results in improved performance that can be very
significant for the heavier oils (12 API). The experiments reveal the optimal VRR for a specific oil; the optimal duration of
the reduced VRR for commercial waterfloods is best investigated with numerical simulations.

Numerical Simulations of VRR < 1

Numerical simulations of VRR < 1 face a number of challenges. As already discussed, VRR < 1 activates many more
mechanisms than VRR = 1. Which ones should be included in the simulations?

Second, how should the VRR < 1 be achieved? By increasing production or decreasing injection? Commercially, most
projects are injectivity limited. Increasing fluid production with larger volume pumps is easier than drilling more wells; this
suggests that the simulations should increase the production rates to achieve VRR < 1. This raises, however, the complexity
that any increased recovery relative to VRR = 1 may be viewed as acceleration rather than an improved recovery process.
But if the injection rate is decreased in order to achieve a VRR < 1, the process comparison is complicated by the reduced
rate of fluid injection, putting VRR < 1 at a disadvantage relative to VRR = 1 on a time basis. In general, we find that on a
volume of water injected basis, VRR < 1 outperforms VRR = 1 in most cases, whereas on a time basis, VRR = 1 generally
outperforms VRR < 1, except when gas mobility is significantly suppressed.

Conventional simulators do have two of the VRR < 1 mechanisms built in: depletion from volumes of waterflood bypassed
oil (cul de sacs), and relative permeability interference. Thus the simplest approach, requiring no modifications, is to use the
conventional dynamic simulation model and introduce VRR < 1. Assuming a highly detailed static model, grids of increasing
size can quantify the volume of the cul de sacs as described by Alpak et al. Furthermore, the relative permeabilities can be
altered to mimic foaming and emulsification (suppressing Krg & Krw respectively) from the beginning of the simulations,
without stipulating the conditions for the activation of foaming and emulsification. This was the approach of Delgado et al.; it
was expedient, and it did provide a broad perspective on the VRR < 1 process.

Delgado et al. demonstrated on a core scale that VRR < 1 can both increase and decrease the oil recovery. The oil properties
were of an 18 API Alaska North Slope sandstone reservoir whose VRR field performance had been previously reported
(Vittoratos et al., 2010). For relatively mobile gas with high gas relative permeabilities and small critical saturation the
introduction of the gas phase via VRR < 1 decreased the oil recovery. But with low gas relative permeabilities and larger
critical gas saturations, say 0.05 or 0.1, VRR < 1 could significantly increase the oil recovery, by as much as 25% OOIP.
These simulations were performed on a core scale, and the absolute recovery numbers are of limited applicability to
commercial waterfloods; the trends, however, are believed to be of commercial relevance.

More detailed commercial simulations with a representative geological model of the same 18 API Alaskan reservoir have
also been performed. Using history matched relative permeabilities, operating with a VRR < 1 recovered more oil than
operating with a VRR = 1 at a given amount of water injected. On a time basis, VRR = 1 did recover more oil than VRR < 1.
The time evolution of the water cut was also important. Initially VRR < 1 lowered the water/oil ratio (WOR) relative to VRR
= 1, but then, after recovering about half the ultimate oil recovery, the WOR with VRR < 1 increased above that of VRR = 1.
We have also observed that it is optimal to limit the duration of VRR < 1 to several years. Explicit emulsion multiphase flow
models have been formulated; we are accumulating laboratory data to describe the emulsification process for specific oils to
permit a predictive simulation capability.

Empirical Observations of VRR < 1

We have previously pointed out that anecdotal empirical reports do not support that VRR = 1 is optimal for heavy oil
waterflooding (Vittoratos et al., 2006). Despite the importance of voidage replacement, we are not aware of any systematic
field pilots or studies on the role of VRR for heavy oil waterfloods. This is not surprising: besides the expected operational
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difficulties and surprises, field studies have methodological difficulties in design. Specifically, geological differences
between the areas assigned to different VRR strategies could easily dominate the reservoir response rather the VRR. If,
alternatively, one location is chosen to remove geological differences and different VRRs are sequentially tested, then the
duration of different VRRs need to be small so that the VRR efficacy will not be biased by the depletion that naturally occurs
with time in any reservoir.

We first reported on a heavy oil (~18 API) waterflood on the North Slope of Alaska in 2006. The field is composed of several
stacked, relatively uniform, sands from a shoreface depositional environment; subsequent faulting created many isolated
hydraulic blocks of various sizes. The sands are produced by multilateral horizontal wells; the injectors may be both vertical
or horizontal wells.

What is striking is that despite the clearly articulated VRR =1 management plan, only one of the hydraulic blocks has
approached cumulatively its target VRR; it is currently circa 0.9. The other large hydraulic blocks remain near 0.7, as in our
last report in 2010. Since the commencement of the waterflood circa 2000, there have been repeated efforts to increase the
instantaneous VRR (iVRR) in order to achieve a cumulative VRR = 1 (cVRR). Such efforts, though reducing the gas oil
ratio, also significantly increased the watercuts, thus limiting the duration of periods of iVRR > 1, and forcing a re-
introduction of iVRR < 1. This cycling of the iVRR is illustrated in Fig. 3 for one sand layer in a hydraulically confined
block, with a cVRR of 0.75 to date.

Fig. 3. Waterflood oil production (green) from one sand from one hydraulic block from an 18 API North Slope Reservoir.
Increases in iVRR > 1 (blue) to achieve a cVRR = 1 could not be maintained without loss of production. Current cVRR =
0.75.

The last iVRR cycle in Fig. 3 is shown in more detail in Fig. 4. The water injection rate was increased by 60% (yellow
highlight), achieving a iVRR ~ 1.4; but this caused the water oil ratio to increase fourfold from circa two to eight, and the
GOR to return to its solution value (not shown). The oil rate was cut in half during 2009, the period of iVRR > 1. This
suggests that solution gas drive activated by VRR < 1 was a significant recovery mechanism supplementing or almost
matching during this period - the waterflood displacement. Upon reduction of the water injection rate so that iVRR < 1, the
WOR returned to near its former value and there was a recovery in the oil rate.
8 SPE 166609

Fig. 4. Water injection increase during 2008 and 2009 (yellow) resulted in a fourfold increase in the WOR.

We have accumulated other evidence of the incremental benefit of having some solution gas drive present in the waterflood
with VRR < 1. Comparing sand layers with a variety of VRR histories, it appears that the oil production decline rate is slower
with a iVRR < 1. As previously mentioned, however, geological differences between different sands make a quantitative
assessment of the contribution of VRR < 1 uncertain.

Commercial numerical simulations with conventional physics of a representative type geological model of these sands do not
display such a large effectiveness for VRR < 1. This suggests that the dynamic type model is not realistic or correct in at least
three ways: (1) the static geological model is too homogeneous, having minimal cul de sac unswept volumes; (2) the three
phase relative permeabilities are not correct, with a possible higher critical gas saturation in the presence of water (Kortekaas
et al.,1991); and (3) emulsification and foaming physics may be occurring but are not included in the simulations. It is not
uncommon that geological models do not fully capture the heterogeneity of the reservoir sands, even with relatively small
grid blocks.

Comparison with Other IOR processes (Polymer flood)

If we consider waterflood recovery with VRR =1 as the benchmark process, then an optimized VRR < 1 can be viewed as an
independent IOR process. How would an optimized VRR < 1 incremental recovery compare with alternative IOR processes,
particularly polymer flooding? The answer is more complicated than it may first appear. In view of our extensive work with
VRR <1, we believe that polymer flooding may incorporate some aspects of the VRR < 1 mechanisms. Polymer floods
viscosify the injected water for improved mobility control and increased conformance of the injected fluid. As a consequence
the injectivity is significantly reduced, sometimes by as much as 50% or more; maintaining a VRR = 1 would require either
an increase in the number of injectors, or a reduction of total fluid production rate or both. As both interventions reduce the
economic returns, some (most?) projects operate with a VRR < 1. Thus such projects have at least two mechanisms
operative: viscosification of the injected water & and VRR < 1. Preliminary simulations to deconvolve the mechansims
indicate that as much as one third of the incremental recovery attributed to polymer flooding may in fact be a result of
operating with a VRR < 1. Thus the intrinsic value of the polymer alone in increasing recovery may be significantly lower
than it may appear.

A key difference between the VRR < 1 process and alternative IOR & EOR processes is that with increased spacing the value
of an optimized VRR < 1 process increases, whereas the value of other IOR & EOR processes significantly decreases. The
increased geological heterogeneity with larger spacing significantly increasing the risk for polymer and chemical processes,
but increases the proportion of geological cul de sacs that can contribute to increased recovery with VRR < 1.

Conclusions

Significant heavy oil resources, much of them offshore, remain to be waterflooded. The success of these projects will depend
on optimal VRR management. The current paradigm of VRR =1 for the duration of the waterflood is not optimal. Empirical,
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laboratory and simulation data and analyses indicate that periods with VRR < 1 would be beneficial. The activation of
solution gas drive decreases the oil production decline rate. The value of the optimal VRR will depend on the oil chemistry;
the duration of the under injection will depend primarily on the oil viscosity, well spacing, and heterogeneity of the
depositional environment. Laboratory big can VRR experiments with a 12 API oil indicate significantly higher recoveries
with a VRR < 1. Our simulations suggest that the durations of these VRR < 1 periods for commercial projects should be
circa several years or more.

An optimized VRR < 1 strategy compares favourably with other IOR processes particularly for offshore projects with their
large spacings.

Acknowledgements

We thank our many colleagues for their inputs to our project. The simulations of Zee Zhu, Tom Gould, Pedro San Blas and
Brian Vanderheyden on VRR < 1 generated insightful discussions. Frank Paskvan and Bradley Brice contributed to the range
of interpretations of the mechanisms of the laboratory experiments. We thank BP for permission to publish this paper.

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