Numerical and Analytical Waterflood Evaluation of North Kuwait Giant Carbonate Reservoir

Abstract Waterflood (WF) is the main drive mechanism of North Kuwait reservoirs. Different development strategies has been adopted to develop a giant carbonate reservoir in the asset. Irregular scheme of WF has been implemented in the last 5 years which made it challenging to properly evaluate the WF performance. This paper presents both numerical and analytical approaches to assess the current performance of the waterflood in this reservoir. The first method uses actual production and injection data to generate traditional waterflood plots such WOR vs. Np, injection throughput, VRR and other diagnostics. The second approach uses the numerical model to understand the fluid movements in terms of production and water injection. A high resolution model is used to know about the horizontal producers and injectors WF scheme. Streamline model tool is used to understand how the injectors impact their surrounding producers. Injector's efficiency, allocation factors and reservoir sweep efficiency are calculated using the simulation model. Both approaches are compared to have a better evaluation of the waterflood. When the waterflood started, a regular i-9 spot patterns was the way to develop the reservoir. The heterogeneity of the reservoir was observed clearly in the different performance of each pattern. Also, high permeability layer (thief zone) has adversely affected the reservoir performance during WF. The sharp increase of water cut with very low corresponding recovery factor triggered a paradigm shift in developing this waterflooded reservoir. Injecting in lower layers and producing in upper layers (horizontal wells) was the next stage. This brought a great challenge to assess the performance of this WF scheme. Evaluating such a development strategy remains a achallenge.