The amount of water injected, produced and discharged to sea in aging fields on the Norwegian Continental Shelf is increasing. Water handling is energy-intensive and costly, and represents about 50% of the total energy for field operation.
Efficient water management is crucial for field economics and emission reduction.
Specific aims of this work package are:
- To further investigate solutions for improved macroscopic sweep of reservoirs.
- To minimize injection water recirculation with reduced energy needs, thus reducing CO2 emissions.
- To implement life cycle analysis methodology for energy system analysis for calculating net-zero emission (NZE) indicators such as Unit Energy Invested and Energy Recovery Factor.
- To develop simulation tools to support the new water management methods, including emission and energy calculations using the open source code eCalc released in 2023.
Three projects have been defined:
The CO2 footprint depends strongly on water-cut and methods to lower the water injection and -production in high water-cut fields. This will contribute to achieve the 2030 goal to lower CO2 emission by more than 50%. Oil will be lost if only flow rate is reduced. Methods to improve the sweep efficiency will minimize the oil loss and if optimized, contribute to improved oil production at lower water-cut and CO2 emission. It is important to evaluate IOR potential from large perspective when making decisions for field implementation. The traditional industrial practice at companies in the preliminary and conceptual phases will form basis to estimate cost and feasibilities. New elements to be included in the NZE production context are CO2 emission, cost saving related to energy efficiency and renewable energy phase-in.
Waterflooding of heterogeneous reservoirs often lead to high water production and signifi-cant energy is needed to process this water. Modifying currently injected seawater may give better sweep and the reduced back produced water will therefore contribute to net-zero emission (NZE) production. This project will explore possibilities of using environmentally friendly clay, particles, and remaining oil as emulsion from back produced water, CO2 and other chemical components to modify injection water to improve waterflooding and reduce back produced water.
IORSim is an IOR process simulator linkable to commercial reservoir simulators. It was developed as part of The National IOR Centre of Norway. IORSim will in this project be further matured for smart water applications combined with geochemistry. A near wellbore module will also be developed for evaluation of chemical water shut-off processes and tight rock production.
Work package 4 summed up
Water handling is energy-intensive and costly, and represents about 50% of the total energy for field operation. Therefore, efficient water management is crucial for field economics and emission reduction.