SPE-198157-MS

Overview of Tracer Applications in Oil and Gas Industry

Deena Tayyib, Abdulaziz Al-Qasim, and Sunil Kokal, Saudi Aramco; Olaf Huseby, RESMAN

Copyright 2019, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Kuwait Oil & Gas Conference and Show held in Mishref, Kuwait, 13 - 16 October 2019.

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
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Abstract
Tracer technology is an efficient and effective monitoring and surveillance tool with many useful
applications in the oil and gas industry. Some of these applications include improving reservoir
characterization, waterflood optimization, remaining oil saturation (Sor) determination, fluid pathways,
and connectivity between wells. Tracer surveys can be deployed inter-well between an injector and offset
producer(s) or as push-and-pull studies in a single well.
Tracers can be classified several ways. (a) Based on their functionality: partitioning and passive tracers.
Partitioning tracers interact with the reservoir and thus propagate slower than passive tracers do. The time
lag between the two types can be used to estimate Sor, to ultimately assess and optimize EOR operations.
(b) Based on their carrying fluid: water and gas tracers. These can be used in IOR or EOR operations. All
gas tracers are partitioning tracers and the most common are perfluorocarbons; they are thermally stable,
environmentally friendly, have high detectability and low natural occurrence in the reservoir. On the other
hand, water tracers are passive tracers and the most commonly used ones are fluorinated acids. (c) Based
on radioactivity: radioactive and non-radioactive tracers. Selecting a tracer to deploy in the field depends
on a number of factors including their solubility, fluid compatibility, background concentration, stability,
detectability, cost, and environmental impact.
This paper provides an overview of various tracer applications in the oil and gas industry. These
will include the single-well tracer test (SWCT), inter-well tracer test (IWTT), nano tracers, gas tracers
and radioactive tracers. Their use will be highlighted in different scenarios. Field case studies will be
reviewed for all types of tracers. Lessons learnt for all the applications, including what works and what
does not work, will be shared. Specific cases and examples will include the optimization of waterflood
operations, remaining oil saturation determination, flow paths and connectivity between wells, and IOR/
EOR applications. The current state-of-the-art will be presented and novel emerging methods will be
highlighted. This paper will showcase how the tracer technology has evolved over the years and how it
shows great potential as a reservoir monitoring and surveillance tool.

Introduction
Tracer technology is a versatile technique used to investigate mass transport in many oil field applications
– both in sub-surface formations and in wells, flow lines, and process plants. In this review, we will limit
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ourselves to tracer applications in the sub-surface reservoirs. Tracer technology was used in the early
1900s in hydrology (Guan et al., 2005) and developed through the years to be frequently used in oilfield
applications with the objective of determining well-to-well connectivity, fluid pathways and heterogeneities.
A tracer can be defined as an infinitesimal and identifiable part of a mass that is introduced or naturally
present, and that can be used to keep track of that mass. A tracer is affected by movement of the mass it
tracks– but should not itself affect the movement. Tracers typically experience considerable dilution before
entering the producing well and needs to be abundant "enough" to be identified at the producers. However,
this does not require amounts large enough to influence mass movements. The term ideal tracer is sometimes
used in tracer related literature: It can be defined as a tracer that moves exactly as the phase it is designed
to track. Note that this is not possible for gas tracers because they always partition between oil and gas
phases (Dugstad et al., 1992). For the water phase, a tritium labelled water molecule (HTO), fulfills the
requirement of an ideal tracer. HTO is therefore often used as benchmark when qualifying other tracers,
either in laboratory studies or in field pilots. HTO and other radioactive tracers were commonly used in the
petroleum industry previously (Beier et al., 1998). However, the development of analytical techniques and
chemical tracers the last 25-30 years (Galdiga et al., 1998; Dugstad et al., 1992; Kleven et al., 1996) have
now mostly replaced the radioactive tracers.
Although several methods exist to obtain information about the reservoir, such as production rates, 4D
seismic and pressure testing, tracers have proven to be a very useful monitoring and surveillance tool.
In complex reservoirs or if data are difficult to obtain with other techniques, tracer are particularly well
suited (Shook et al., 2009). An obvious piece of information available from tracers is the direct proof of
communication in the connected pore space of a reservoir. By comparing produced mass vs. injected mass
the importance of these connections can also be assessed. In addition, the time from injection to production
– measured either by the breakthrough time, the arrival time of most of the tracer (represented by the apex in
a tracer production curve) or the average arrival time is readily available in many tracer tests. By relatively
straightforward interpretation, these times give important information on volumes swept and heterogeneity
of reservoir flows.
Tracer are typically added to injection fluids, such as water or gas, to track the fluid movement inside
the reservoir. In some applications, the objective is to provide a better understanding of fluid pathways
and flow directions, well-to-well connectivity and to detect significant heterogeneities such as fractures
and flow barriers. In such applications the objective is thus to improve reservoir characterization and
reduce uncertainties of reservoir models. Other tracer technology objectives may include determination
of the efficiency of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations such as water-alternating-gas (WAG) cycles,
determining residual oil saturation (SOR) and detecting bypassed hydrocarbons oil.
In a typical tracer operation, the tracers are injected as narrow pulses – although continuous injection has
also been applied in some cases (Skillbrei et al., 1990). After injection, producing wells are monitored by
sample collection and laboratory analysis to detect tracer concentration in the produced fluids. Because the
tracer concept is broad and covers many application objectives, there is a large variety of potential uses.
Among the most commonly reported tracer methodologies are the so-called single well chemical tracer
test (SWCTT) and the inter-well tracer test (IWTT). IWTT involves injecting and producing tracers from
different wells to evaluate fluid movement and connectivity in the area between injector-producer pairs. If
the objective of the IWTT is to determine the SOR in the inter-well region, the test is commonly denoted
a partitioning inter-well tracer test (PITT). The PITT and the SWCTT share the objective of determining
oil saturation – typically after water flooding or EOR flooding. However, whereas a PITT always test an
inter-well region, the SWCTT involve injecting and producing the tracer from the same well and gives an
assessment of oil saturation in near-well zones.
SPE-198157-MS 3

Tracer Technology
Tracer Types
Tracers can be classified in many ways. First, tracers can be classified generally into natural and artificial
tracers. Any compounds naturally present in the environment such as formation water can be used as
a tracer, if there's a significant difference between formation and injected water composition. Artificial
Tracers are any foreign compounds introduced into the reservoir, which includes radioactive tracers, neutral,
anionic, cationic species, chemicals, inorganic elements, fluorescent molecules, etc. (Serres-Piole et al.,
2012). Tracers can also be classified based on their functionality, e.g. into partitioning and non- partitioning
(passive) tracers or based on their carrier fluid into gas and water tracer.
In the past, radioactive tracers were commonly used in the petroleum industry (Beier et al., 1998). The
advantage of radioactive tracers are two-fold. First, some of the radioactive tracers are chemically equivalent
to non-radioactive molecules in the phases they are tracking. This is typically achieved by substituting a
non-radioactive atom in a molecule by a radioactive isotope such as carbon-14 or tritium. For water, a
tritiated water molecule behaves exactly as an ordinary water molecule, except that the mass is increased
by the two additional neutrons in the tritium isotope. Historically, a second advantage was the considerable
lower detection limits of radioactive tracers – implying that only small amount of tracers needed to be
injected. Today this advantage is less pronounced, as the development of new chemical tracers and analysis
methodologies has pushed the detection limits low enough for chemical tracers that required injection
amounts are well within operational constraints (Galdiga et al., 1998; Dugstad et al., 1992; Kleven et al.,
1996). Due to regulatory constraints – and since chemical tracers could replace radioactive tracers they
have to a large extent become obsolete and are rarely used today. For a historic overview of radioactive
tracer types and their use, see e.g. Wheeler et al. (1985). To be suited in an oil field, tracers need to satisfy
a number of characteristics, including

• Thermally, biologically and chemically stable in reservoir and storage conditions.

• Negligible adsorption towards rock surfaces.

• Allow simple and fast quantitative analysis at low concentration.

• Low toxicity and doesn't influence the physical properties of the reservoir fluids.

• Unique in the reservoir environment to avoid background noise.

• Available for purchase in large quantities at reasonable cost.

• Safe and easy to analyze.

• Possible to analyze at low concentrations to reduce injection volume.

• Compatible with carrier fluid and soluble in relevant phases.

For large fields with several producers and injectors, it is desirable to have a large enough selection of
tracers to enable injection of unique tracers in each injector. This imply that a constant quest for new tracer
chemicals is required. Finding and qualifying new inter-well tracers is time consuming and expensive and
the number of suitable tracers are thus relatively limited – with about 40 water tracers and about 20 gas
tracers available.

Water Tracers
Water tracers are used e.g. to investigate and improve water-flooding performances. An extensive overview
of tracers suggested and used for tracing water in oil reservoirs is given by Serres-Piole et al., (2012). In their
classification Serres-Piole et al. distinguish between passive tracers, partitioning tracers and nanoparticles.
4 SPE-198157-MS

Passive water tracers

Following the description of Serres-Piole et al. for passive water tracers we briefly note that a large
body of radioactive and non-radioactive compounds have been suggested for used as tracers. Additionally,
several naturally occurring compounds have been used as natural tracers. The latter is useful to distinguish
injected water from formation water but cannot identify specific sources of injected water that arrive at
a producer. Excluding radioactive elements (that have drawbacks as mentioned above) from Serres-Piole
et al.'s list, we can briefly summarize the most important passive, injected tracers as inorganic elements,
alcohols, fluorescent molecules and fluorinated benzoic acids. According to our own experience, as also
noted by Serres-Piole et al., the oil industry has focused on the fluorinated benzoic acid tracers, since their
introduction in the early 1990's. The explanation for this success is found in these tracer's conservative
behavior (no adsorption), no partitioning at small concentrations, excellent thermal, chemical and biological
stability (Bjørnstad, 1994, 1997, 1998; Galdiga, 1998; Gieles and Beuthan, 2004; Hernandez et al., 2002),
in addition to the moderate cost of the active chemical used when manufacturing these tracers. It should
be noted that of the other molecules suggested as tracers, plenty are not generally suitable as tracers. For
example, several fluorescent tracers (e.g. eosin, rhodamine and fluorsecin) have been found to be unstable
and adsorb to reservoir rock (e.g. Cheung et al.,1999; de Melo et al., 2001; Lichtenberger, 1991; Wienhofer
et al., 2009; Stetzenbach and Farnhalm; Bjørnstad, 1991).

Partitioning inter-well water tracers

The fact that chemical compounds introduced in a moving (water) phase arrive at an outlet separated in time,
according to their oil/water partitioning into a stationary (oil) phase, is well known from chromatography.
Additionally, the fractional flow of oil and water is obviously important for understanding and optimizing
production from oil reservoirs – and of particular importance when EOR methodologies are evaluated. A
methodology to use of tracers to quantify the remaining oil saturation, was proposed by Cooke (1971).
This method is commonly referred to as a partitioning inter-well tracer test (PITT). The method rely on
knowing the oil-water partitioning coefficients for at least two tracers and measuring the time delay between
these two tracers as they move from an injector to a producer. In applications it is customary to assume
that partitioning is instantaneous and that K can be measured independently in lab experiments. In practical
applications it is convenient to use a non-partitioning tracer (K = 0) and a partitioning tracer (K = Co/Cw).
In such cases the oil saturation is given as:

(1)

where TR and TW are retention times for the partitioning and passive tracers, respectively.
Until recently, inter-well applications of Cooke's idea has been scarce in the oil industry with a few
notable exceptions (e.g. Lichtenberger, 1991). In the hydrology domain, the methodology has been more
frequently used, in particular to asses and remediate non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) contaminations in
aquifers (Jin et al., 1995; Cain et al., 2000; Divine et al., 2004). A likely reason for the limited use of PITTs
in oil reservoirs was the lack of suitable chemical partitioning tracers. This lack was remediated by by Viig
et al. (2013), who introduced a new class of partitioning tracers, suitable for oil reservoirs. The applicability
of these tracers for PITTs was demonstrated by Viig et al. (2013) in the Lagrave field, by Hartvig et al.
(2015) in the Bockstedt field, and by Sanni et al. (2018).

Gas Tracers
An overview of gas tracers applied in oil reservoirs is given in Dugstad (2007). In addition to radioactive
gas tracers (that share the inconveniences of radioactive water tracers) the main tracers reported in the
literature are perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), deuterated hydrocarbons and freons. The latter
have largely been removed from the portfolio of available tracers due to environmental considerations based
SPE-198157-MS 5

on their ozone depleting properties. Deuterated hydrocarbons are based use of the stable but rare deuterium
isotope of hydrogen and are expensive enough to prohibit use in large scale projects – leaving SF6 and
perfluorocarbons as the main options for use as gas tracers. These tracers were investigated in detail by
Dugstad et al. (1992) and applied in oil reservoirs by e.g. Dugstad et. al. (1999). The gas tracers available
today have excellent properties with respect to stability and detectability and have been used in reservoirs
world-wide (Dugstad, 2007).

Selection of Tracers, Wells and Sampling

Many early tracer tests failed due to use of inadequate and poorly behaved "tracers" (Viig et al., 2013; Serres-
Piole et al., 2012). Generally is therefore advantageous to select tracers from the portfolio of qualified and
well-tested tracer chemicals available. Normally this selection is performed during the design phase of a
tracer project and if performed properly, it is normally not required to verify stability or compatibility with
the reservoir to be investigated. If tracers have been deployed earlier in a specific field, verification of any
background concentration in the reservoir fluids may nevertheless be advisable, as the stability of adequate
tracers imply that background concentrations may be present for extended periods of time. For oil/water
partitioning tracers applied in a PITT, it is important to determine the partitioning coefficient (K-value) of
each partitioning tracer to evaluate oil saturations. K-values can be evaluated in static batch experiments
or by a dynamic experiment that involves flooding a core or a sand-packed column with known Sor under
reservoir condition (Viig et al., 2013).
Selection of injection wells and sampling wells depends mostly on the objectives of a tracer study. For
injection wells it may also be relevant to consider the effects of any injection into zones or parts of the
reservoir not considered interesting. The tracers will passively follow the injection streams and if injectivity
into uninteresting parts of the reservoir is large, much of the tracer material will be "lost" in this zone. If
considered during design, such challenges may be remediated either by shutting off parts of the reservoir – or
by injecting large enough amounts that sufficient amounts of tracer material enters the interesting part of the
reservoir. As for the monitoring, all nearby producing wells should be considered and sampled if possible.
If a selection is required, it should be based on the need to know the fluid movement and connectivity
between wells (Vilela et al., 2013). It is however important to keep in mind that tracers are especially useful
to detect unknown and surprising connections in the reservoir. Sampling of a broad range of offset producers
is therefore generally a sound strategy in any tracer project.
Sampling is a relatively simple task in a tracer project and produced fluid samples for subsequent tracer
analysis can typically be collected at the wellhead, at the test separator or from a valve on the side or the
bottom of the flow line. Even is sampling is straightforward the importance of good sampling should not be
underestimated. If sampling is inadequate, samples are mislabeled, contaminated by fluid from other wells
etc. it can significantly undermine the results from a tracer test. Useful considerations to ensure successful
sampling, according to Al-Abbad et al., (2017) include:
1. Monitor the tracers routinely.
2. Label sample bottles or tubes to avoid mix up and contamination.
3. Field personnel must be trained in the sampling tracers.
4. Good communication between the office and field personnel.
5. For some tracers (to prevent biodegradation) biocides can be added to each sample as soon as possible
to ensure sample integrity.
At the start of sampling, the sampling frequency should be high enough to ensure detection of
breakthrough. Depending on breakthrough expectation, this could imply sampling intervals as small as
hours in extreme cases. In most inter-well scenarios however, typical initial sampling frequency would be
once or twice per week. If analysis does not detect tracer in the high-frequency sampling regime, sampling
6 SPE-198157-MS

frequency can be reduced successively. Two typical sampling frequency scenarios are given in Table 1 and
Table 2.

Table 1—Gas Tracer sampling frequency.

Table 2—Water Tracer sampling frequency.

Sample analysis
Once samples are collected, they are sent to specialized tracer labs to detect tracers’ concentration to generate
a response curve (concentration vs. time) for each well. Contemporary analysis methodologies are sensitive
and provide detection limits as low as 50 parts-per-trillion for water tracers and even lower for gas tracers.
For an overview of analysis methodology we refer to Serres-Piole et al., (2012).

Interpretation of Tracer Data

To extract information value from tracer data they need to be interpreted at some level. The simplest
form of interpretation requires little less than a map of the reservoir and wells and consists in recording
breakthrough times and adding this to the reservoir map. At the other end of the scale we find interpretation
of tracer data using reservoir simulation software (e.g. Illiassov and Datta-Gupta, 2002; Aurdal et al, 2001;
Huseby et al., 2008; Jerauld et al., 2010). Most simulators available commercially have options to enable
simulation of tracer transport – hence tracer data can be included just as any other reservoir production data.
An alternative both to simple breakthrough and more laborious simulation is provided by residence time
distribution analysis (RTD). RTD analysis is a powerful tool that can be used to assess several characteristic
properties of the flow in a system. It was originally developed to describe flow in chemical reactor systems
(Danckwerts 1953) and was used to interpret tracer data by several authors since. RTD-methodology was
extended to estimate flow geometry and heterogeneity in a reservoir from tracer curves by Shook (2003)
and Shook and Forsmann (2005). Here we give a description of the methodology following the that given
by Huseby et al. (2016).
As the name implies, RTD is the distribution of times used by a population of tracer particles to travel
through a medium. The tracers represent elements of fluid that travel through different paths, and that
therefore use different amounts of time to pass through a medium. The distribution, E(t), of these times is
called the exit age distribution, or residence time distribution, of the fluid in the system. E(t) is defined from
produced tracer concentrations, C(t), production rate, Qp(t), and injected tracer amount, M, as
(2)
The unit of E is the inverse of the time unit. If a system has one injector and multiple producers j with
production rates Qj, we can define residence time distributions between each injector and producer j as
SPE-198157-MS 7

(3)
In a closed system the normalization by injected tracer amount ensures that

(4)

where the sum is over all producers.

Important information about the geometry and flow in a system can be obtained from the two first
moments of the residence time distribution. They are given as

(5)

where the zero moment represents the relative amount of tracer produced in production well j, and when the
first moment represents the average residence time for the tracers between the injection well and producer j.
The RTD methodology to interpret tracer data is in our view appealing because of its simplicity –
combined with the power to extract important flow information from an inter-well tracer study. One example
of how RTD analysis can give valuable information is provided by Huseby et al. (2016). The main finding
from this work is summarized in Figure 1.

Figure 1—Summary of results from RTD analysis of tracer data in the Matzen field. In subfigure (a) the yellow arrows
represents flow of water from injector S-81 towards the producers and the red curve represents flow from injector SC-1
towards S-54. The widths of each of the arrows is proportional to the amount of tracer produced in each of the producers
and the areas of the ellipses correspond to the swept areas for each injector-producer pairs. In subfigure (b) the swept
pore volume before (blue ellipse) and after polymer injection (yellow) are compared. Figures after Huseby et al. (2016).

Single Well Chemical Tracer Test

Single-well chemical tracer test (SWCTT) is one of the proven technologies to estimate the amount of oil
remaining after flooding. It exploits the difference in travel time between injected ester and the alcohol
generated in-situ by hydrolysis. It was pioneered by Esso in the early seventies (Deans, 1971). SWCTTs
have been used in numerous on-shore and some offshore locations to evaluate the potential for EOR (Deans
& Carlisle, 2007; Seccombe et al., 2008; Zainal et al. 2008; Jerauld et al., 2010; Skrettingland et al., 2011). It
has also been used to evaluate the effect of chemical EOR floods (Hernandez et al., 2002; Zainal et al., 2008;
Oyemade et al., 2010; de Zwart et al., 2011; Callegaro et al., 2014) and low-salinity water flooding (see
e.g., McGuire et al., 2005; Seccombe et al., 2008; Jerauld et al., 2010; Skrettingland et al., 2011; Callegaro
et al., 2014).
In addition to the primary partitioning and reacting tracer, the test include use of a mass balance tracer. Set
at a constant concentration during injection, it gives a direct measurement of the fraction of injected water
retrieved during back-flow. In addition a "back-up" tracer (also denoted cover tracer) is injected together
with the reacting, partitioning tracer. Theoretical tracer curves from an ideal SWCTT are provided below.
8 SPE-198157-MS

We note the sigmoidal shaped mass balance tracer concentration (grey curve) as well as the cover tracer
(green curve) in addition to the primary partitioning tracer (EtAc) and the in-situ generated alcohol (EtOH).
In many field case examples close to ideal behaviour has been observed. One example is the test reported
by Callegaro et al. (IPTC17951), compared to theoretical curves in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2—Tracers commonly used in single well chemical tracer test. The left subfigure show theoretical
curves and the right subfigure are field case data reported by Callegaro et al. (2014). The full lines
in the right subfigure are results from numerical simulations used to interpret the measured data.

Most reported SWCTT operations use ethyl acetate (EtAc) as primary reacting tracer in addition to
normal propyl alcohol (NPA) and isopropyl alcohol (IPA) as cover-tracer and mass-balance tracers. These
tracers are used at concentrations of about 1% (Wellington and Richardson, 1994; Seccombe et al., 2008;
Skrettingland et al., 2011), which requires handling of large amounts (~1000 kg) of highly flammable
and volatile liquid tracers. Depending on reservoir conditions, such as temperature, alternative esters (e.g.,
methyl or propyl formates) are sometimes used, albeit at similar quantities and with comparable physical
properties. To remediate the need for large amounts of tracers, Krivokapic et al. (2016) developed a new
family of SWCTT tracers, that were field tested by Al Abbad et al. (2018).

Overview and lessons learned from tracer tests reported in the open
literature
Tracer Technology has evolved over the years and many of the problems faced before 1990's have been
mitigated and overcome. Different tracer tests have been deployed around the world (cf. Figure 3-Error!
Reference source not found. and Table 3 - Table 6). Other reviews, such as Shook et al. (2009) reports that
43 tracer tests were summarized in the literature, of which 60% were water tracers. About 70% of these 43
tests were interpreted qualitatively (Neva et al., 2009). Currently, the most commonly reported tracer test in
the open literature is the IWTT, with water tracers and qualitative analysis being the most commonly used to
interpret the tests. There are more than 200 SWTT performed under a wide range of conditions (Tang et al.,
1995) and most of them were documented in a report by Deans and Majoros (Deans et al., 1986). However,
there's a lack of information in the literature regarding the performance of SWTT at high temperature and
high salinity (Mechergui et al., 2012) but they are still more common than PITT with the exception dating
back to 1990's. To date there are only a few PITTs described in the open literature.
SPE-198157-MS 9

Figure 3—Plot showing the number of IWTT deployments.

Inter Well Tracer Test (IWTT) Applications

Table 3 summarizes different successful IWTTs, reported in the literature from 1966 to 2018. IWTT provides
valuable information on well-to-well communication, fluid movement, sweep efficiency and determining
heterogeneities in many fields. It aids in adjusting reservoir models and in taking remedial actions, i.e.,
plugging channels and re-completing wells, as discussed by Hutchins et al. 1991. It also helps in managing
wells’ production and assessing the potential of different IOR projects including water, miscible gas,
surfactant and polymer flooding. IWTT even helped improve IOR operations in complex reservoirs, as was
the case in Al Shaheen field, which was a highly heterogeneous area with a stacked sequence of carbonate
and clastic reservoirs.
10 SPE-198157-MS

Table 3—Summary of IWTT Deployment.

SPE-198157-MS 11
12 SPE-198157-MS

In summary some lessons learned from inter-well tracer tests reported in the open literature are:

• Tracer studies may take a considerable amount of time and a dedicated project management plan
to follow the project through from initiation to finalization is advantageous
• Reservoir complexities may provide challenging interpretation but these are also the instances
where tracer testing can prove especially useful
• Keeping the well conditions as stable as possible and avoiding well workover during injection is
important.
• Stable conditions during extended production may be difficult to achieve. If this can be achieved,
however it can provide results that are easier to interpret.
• Results from tracer tests should be periodically be included in simulation model updates

• Conducting pre-IWTT tests, i.e., single and inter-well pressure transient test, pulse test, reservoir
drift test, and injectivity test can help in planning IWTT. It should be kept in mind however, that
tracers measure mass transport and connection – where interference tests measures transport and
connection of pressure waves – that are not necessarily the same
• Inadequate field preparations may yield unsuccessful tracer surveys, as was the case in Wasson
San Andreas Field.
• In case injection wells are completed with madrels and packers, it's recommended to trace
independently rather than combined to eliminate doubt for which madrel was more critical (Notable
example: the LCI field, Morales et al.; 2018).

Single Well Chemical Tracer Test (SWCTT) Applications

Table 4 summarizes SWCTTs reported in detail in the open literature. In addition to this table we refer to
Deans et al., 1986 who summarizes a large body of SWCTTs and provides a qualification of the test. The
SWCTT has been used determine residual oil saturation (ROS) and its distribution, thus aiding in reservoir
management and optimization of surfactant, SP and ASP flooding. It also helps identify the locations of
future pilot zones with the highest and lowest EOR potential, as was the case in Snorre field and to evaluate
the potential for low salinity flooding. It can help assess EOR project in the harsh environment such as Abu
Dhabi's offshore reservoir, which was characterized with high temperature and high salinity conditions.
Figure 4 and Table 4 summarizes different successful SWTTs, reported in the literature from 1978 to 2016.
SPE-198157-MS 13

Figure 4—Plot showing the number of SWTT deployments.

Table 4—Summary of SWTT Deployment.

14 SPE-198157-MS

In summary some lessons learned from SWCTT reported in the open literature are that:
1. Proper design, efficient field operations and pre-test lab work are important to ensure a successful
SWCTT.
2. Running multiple SWCTTs simultaneously is challenging and requires extra attention and support, to
be carried out successfully, as was the case in Handil Field.
3. When non-ideal response is observed, it was helpful to run a second SWCTT identical in volume to
the first test, with no soak time, as was the case in Gulf Coast Reservoir.
4. Temperature survey performed during shut-in assisted in matching and interpreting SWCTT results,
as was the case in West African Field.
5. Replacing water-flood with polymer flood for an SWCTT has a significant advantages, as was the
case in SAMA field.
6. Using wells with zones to be abandoned to inject tracers helped reveal unexpected tracer flow paths,
as was the case in Caracara Field.

Partitioning Interwell Tracer Test (PITT) Applications

In the past there were relatively few PITT tests reported in the literature, with a few notable exceptions
during the 1990's. The first successful field deployment was in Leduc Field. A renewed interest in PITTs
resulted in the development of new PITT tracers that were first field tested in the Lagrave field in France
by Viig et al (2013). These tracers were subsequently tested successfully tested in the Bockstedt field, as
reported by Hartvig et al. (2015) and in an undisclosed field by Sanni et al. (2018). Viig et al reported a good
agreement between PITT results and result from sponge coring analysis and Sanni et al. reported excellent
agreement between PITT results and results from a SWCTT that measured saturation results in the near well
zone. PITT helped in determining ROS, reservoir heterogeneity and the potential gain from different EOR-
operations. Table 5 summarizes different successful PITTs, reported in the literature from 1987 to 2011.

Table 5—Summary of PITT Deployment.

Specialized Applications (Fracking/Stimulation/Short Breakthrough)

In recent years, tracer technology has been used for diagnosing hydraulic fractures, to assess the clean-up
efficiency and evaluate the contribution of each fracture stage to the total HC production (Tian et al., 2016).
Table 6 summarizes different field deployment of different types of tracers: gas, oil-based and radioactive
tracers, to diagnose hydraulic fractures. In the past, radioactive tracers were the most commonly used in the
field to determine proppant distribution, fracture height and volume. Recently, HC-based tracers, in the form
of emulsions added to stimulation fluid, had been deployed in different fields such as Eagle Ford and Lower
SPE-198157-MS 15

Marmaton to optimize stimulation design and maximize production in future wells. Unlike radioactive
tracers, HC-based tracers do not have limited lifespan and do not cause any problems during short or long
term shutting in of the wells (Spencer et al., 2013).

Table 6—Summary of Tracer Test Deployment for Stimulation Assessment.

Emerging tracer technology

In addition to incremental development of existing tracer technology several proposed improvements
to tracer technology are currently investigated by several researchers. Here we briefly mention three
development paths and provide our comments, in view of potential application in the inter-well and near
well tracer domain.

Nano Tracers
Referring to Agenet el al. (2012, we know that nanoparticles have different applications in oil fields
including foam stabilization, water/oil emulsion stabilization, fluid interface imaging and IWTT for
reservoir monitoring. Nano-sizeed particles are large enough that it permits the encapsulation (See Figure
5) of other molecules, such as different fluorescence dyes (Fluorophores) within a matrix of polysiloxane
that coats a gold core. Rare-earth complexes are preferable choice for encapsulation because of their longer
fluorescence lifetime and also allows the detection via time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. The surface
of the bead is stabilized by specific silane molecules such as gluconamide or PEG polyethylene glycol-type
that provides the transport properties in porous media. The process of Nanobeads synthesis is summarized
in Figure 6. For more information, refer to Agenet el al. (2012).

Figure 5—Nanobead Schematic. Figure after Agenet el al. (2012).

16 SPE-198157-MS

Figure 6—Nanobeads Synthesis Process. Figure after Agenet el al. (2012).

The coding character of the Nano tracers depends on the combination of dyes in each nanoparticle.
Entrapped dyes can be chosen between organic molecules (Fluorescein, Rhodamine, Cyanine) and rare
earth (Eu3+, Tb3+, Gd3+) complexes. Dyes such as organic molecules and/or rare-earth complexes can
be quantified by conventional fluorescence apparatus. Specific coding signal is possible by the addition
of different dyes within each Nanobeads. In theory, we're able to produce a dozen of fluorescence tagging
combinations-based nanoparticles with suitable surface properties (Agenet et al., 2012).
Nano Tracers are sensitive to physiochemical conditions such as volume, pH, Temperature, oil ratio, salt
content. Advantages include: (1) specific fluorescence coding (2) long-term colloidal stability in seawater
conditions (3) adaptable real time monitoring detection setup. Nano-tracers are preferable than conventional
tracers because they minimize the interaction with the rock, thus, having higher recovery factor. For more
details on Nanobeads interaction with sandstone rocks, refer to Agenet et al. (2012).
The development of nano particles with ability to be used as tracers is in our view exiting and show
potential for application in many domains. For tracking of movement in subsurface reservoirs, it should
nevertheless be noted that these particles are significantly larger than the simple molecules used as tracer
today. In fact, the size of the particles are large enough that they are comparable to the pore throats in
moderate to low permeable rock, with the potential for size exclusion effects to occur. Before such particles
can be applied as tracers it is thus important to expose them to stringent comparison tests with well-known
tracers.

Naturally occurring DNA tracers

Recent studies of the DNA of microbes naturally occurring within conventional reservoirs (Hayatdavoudi
et al. 2013) have shown promising ability to use their DNA as "naturally occurring" tracers. These
"naturally occurring" tracers should not be confused with previous attempts to use artificially introduced
DNA as tracers reported in the subsurface domain, that failed to be useful due to lack of stability
and strong adsorption to clay minerals. Due to microbes’ high selectivity of subsurface conditions, i.e.,
temperature, organic content, salinity, pressure and pore size, their DNA can be used as fingerprints for
the environment to obtain information that contribute to reservoir characterization and production. The
DNA are sequenced economically through modern methods (Hayden, 2014) to assess critical geometric
parameters resulting from stimulation, thus help in tracking oil flow. Recent studies have demonstrated
high-resolution information with millions of DNA sequences identifying up to a hundred thousand unique
features (Ursell et al., 2016). The field tests conducted in the Permian Basin demonstrated the potential of
SPE-198157-MS 17

subsurface DNA for fracture diagnosis. DNA Tracer has more advantages than conventional tracers used
for stimulation assessments. It overcomes their limitations, i.e., shallow depth of investigation and gross
behavior representation (Suarez-Rivera et al., 2016). Some other advantages of DNA tracers include their
data density, temporality and non-interruptive nature of sample collection (Lascelles et al., 2017).

Summary
Tracer technology is one of the efficient monitoring and surveillance tools used to determine the
underground fluid directions, pathways, oil saturation and well-to-well connectivity to better characterize
the reservoir, and reduce uncertainties of reservoir models to ultimately improve field operations. There are
different types of injected tracers that can be carried through the reservoir by gas or water. All gas tracers
partition between the oleic and gasous phases, which means that they interact with the oil present in the
reservoir. In a sense they are thus oil/gas tracers, rather than pure gas tracers. On the other hand this is
also true for injected gas that can partition between the gasous and oleic phases present in the reservoir.
Passive water tracers move at the same velocity as their carrying water. The time-lag between partitioning
and passive water tracers can be used to determine oil saturation, from which a potential gain from an
EOR operation can be determined. Different factors need to be considered when selecting the type of tracer
deployed such as solubility, compatibility with fluid, background concentration, stability, cost effectiveness
and environmental impact to ensure a successful tracer test. The most commonly used water tracer is FBA
and the most commonly used gas tracers are the perfluorocarbons. The two main types of tests conducted
using tracers are SWCTTs and IWTTs. When the objective of a IWTT is to determine the Sor in the inter-
well region, the test is referred to as a PITT. Tracers have been deployed in different fields around the
world and has proven to be effective in evaluating well-to-well connectivity, understanding the reservoir
dynamics, quantifying So distribution in the reservoir and optimizing different field operations like flooding
and WAG cycles.

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