SELF-PROJECT PROGRESS : DUMP FLOOD

Alfanda Kurnia Widi (PE’16)

M. Hairul Fikri (PE’16)

Petroleum Engineering Department

Faculty of Mining and Petroleum Engineering
Institut Teknologi Bandung
2020
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

Consideration and Dump Flooding

Background Calculations Result Example References
Requirements
02 04 06 08

01 03 05 07 09

Definition Advantages and Innovation Dump Flood Screening

DIsadvantages Simulation Conclusions

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Definition

• Here is dumpflood definition :

“Dumpflooding is the process of flowing a water-bearing reservoir of high pressure

potential to feed into an oil reservoir of lower pressure potential by placing the two
zones in communication through a casing string.” (Davies, 1972)

• Furthermore, Davies,1972 said that :

“The water source can be above or below the oil reservoir, as long as there is sufficient
pressure potential to effect the water transfer.” (Davies, 1972)

Dumpflood Scheme
(Zadravec and Berkic, 2020)

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Background
• Conventional waterflood project is very cost intensive as it requires
surface facilities involving many equipments with long lead time for
procurement, additional injection wells, flowlines, etc. (Shizawi et al.,
2011 and Kuoh et al., 2008).
Dump Flood Schematic (Haiyang et al., 2015)
• This mechanism reduces the number of injector wells required (saving
drilling costs) in addition to expenses associated with building additional
surface facilities and water treatment (Villaroel et al. 2015).

• Remote field with little data available on waterflooding in adjacent

field and no surface water injection facilities is the factor of considering
dumpflood strategy for maintaining reservoir pressure and enhancing oil
recovery (Yao et al., 1999). -
Simulated Production Forecast (Yao et al., 1999)
• This technique has been used mostly in Middle East where ground
water is scarce (Haiyang et al., 2015).

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Background
• There is field that has weak- and strong- water drive reservoir. Dumpflood is performed by allowing water
bearing/ watered-out hydrocarbon formation to cross flow into oil formation (Abdulhadi et al., 2019a) -

• The characteristic of reservoir candidate of dump-flooding is dominated by reservoir pressure depletion, rapid
pressure decline due to ESP usage, and weak aquifer (All references). ESP usage, such as ESP and Jet Pump, is
the main factor of steeper presure depletion because of high withdrawal rate (Noman et al., 2015)

• The pressure showed a steeper decline when the dumpflood well was removed (Osharode et al., 2010).

Pressure Profiles showing the effect of the Pressure History of B-Sand (Noman et al., 2015)
dumpflood well (Osharode et al., 2010)

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Advantages and Disadvantages
• Advantages : • Disadvantages :
1. Low capital costs. 1. The difficulty of measuring the quantity of water
2. Low operating costs. transferring from one zone of high pressure to a
3. Provide necessary injection and avoid extremely second zone of low pressure.
expensive water supply system in remote area. 2. The rate of fluid transfer cannot be controlled.
4. The injection rate could readily be increased by 3. The servicing of either zone becomes more
converting a watered-out well. complicated, hence more expensive.
5. Dumpflooding is a self-regulating process. 4. Hole clean circulation would be a problem if sand
6. The casing corrosion problems are reduced since were deposited.
the fluid transfer occurs in a closed system (to 5. Tubing string would have to be introduced just
prevent O2 appearance). below the source zone perforations for the
7. Simplicity (water compatibility is not an issue). - introduction of corrosion-inhibiting chemicals if
8. Lower risk and exposure with regards to the there was corrosion-fluid.
subsurface uncertainties. 6. The voidage replacement could be less than target
(Davies, 1972 and Abdulhadi et al.,2019) - or too much causing early water breakthrough.
(Davies, 1972 and Abdulhadi et al., 2019) -

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Dumpflood Consideration
Consideration • Major uncertainties in dump flood :
• Concern to design : 1. Production history
1. Well design 2. Reservoir connectivity
2. Compatibility of aquifer
• Other consideration :
3. Capability and applicability of Dumpflood
(Quttainah and Al-Hunaif, 2001 and Yao et al., 1999) 1. Formation damages risks
2. Well integrity issues
• Criteria dump flood screening : 3. Well mechanical integrity
1. Reservoir is depleted 4. Accessibility for well entry
2. Full scale water injection is not feasible and small scale 5. Compatibility of fluid produced
injection is preferable (especially for poor quality 6. Objective zones allow ESP installation properly
reservoir) 7. Well injection index
3. High-pressure water source inside the same well 8. Well construction
4. Suitable offtake well 9. Quality of the well cement
5. Remaining mobile oil saturation in the reservoir 10. Lifting capacity required of selected ESP
6. Dump flood is a last-ditch effort 11. Hydraulic packages
(Abdulhadi et al., 2019a and 2019b) 12. Mechanical shirts
(Devia et al., 2017 and Abdulhadi et al., 2019a)

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Requirements
Tool Properties
• Conventional Artificial Lift Elements (Complete ESP Systems)
• Advanced Artificial Lift Elements (Pod Assembly : Pod Hanger)
• Production casing
• Sand control device
• Gauges
• SSD
• Space
• Retrievable packer
• Flowmeter
• P&T Sensor
• Acoustic data transmission system
• Dumpflood chart (Dumping rates and tubing fluid level)
(All references)

Dump Flood Well Completion (Shizawi et al., 2011)

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Innovation : Intelligent Completion
Intelligent Completion Deviated Well Inteligent Completion
• Tools : • Specifications :
1. Flow control devices (derived from sliding sleeve or 1. Sand control requirements (larger gravel pack or
ball-valve technologies) expandable sand screen)
2. Feedthrough isolation packers 2. Initial Natural Dumpflood
3. Control, communication, and power cables 3. ESP Deployment method (CTDESP)
4. Downhole sensors 4. ESP Design and Setting Depth
(Rawding et al., 2008) 5. Monitoring System (distributed temperature sensor
(DTS), lubricator valve (LV), and wireline cable)
(Kuoh et al., 2008)

Dump Flood Completion (Rawding et al., 2008) Water Dumpflood Injection Schematic (Kuoh et al., 2008)

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 Innovation : Pump Design
ESP Design Pump-Aided Reverse Dumpflood Technique
• Main design : • Main design :
1. Completion through rigless thru tubing perforating 1. Rod pump and dynamometer
2. Pre-Acid stimulation 2. Casing pressure gauge
3. ESP Assisted Dumpflood (ESPAD) 3. Packer
• Alternative design (Encapsulated ESP systems and 4. Perforated tubing sub (Yao et al., 1999)
Tandem packer ESP systems) (Al-Hajeri et al., 2015)

Encapsulated ESP-Packer Dumpflood Tandem ESP-Packer Dumpflood Downhole Water Injection Using Rod
Systems (Al-Hajeri et al., 2015) Systems (Al-Hajeri et al., 2015) Pump (Yao et al., 1999)

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Innovation : Completion Technology and Design
Evaluation and Completion Technology • Option :
• Evaluation : 1. Casing Completion (preferred due to rate required,
1. Pressure Analyses and WRM Practices consequence of failure, future wellbore utility, remedial
2. Review of Flowing and Closed in Wells options, cost and other operating issues, and corrosion)
3. Reservoir Modelling 2. Straddle Completion
4. Dynamic Modelling (Quttainah and Al-Hunaif, 2001)
5. Screening of Existing Oil Wells for Open Up
6. Oil Well Type and Count Sensitivities

• Performance Prediction :
1. Dumpflood performance prediction
2. Inflow and outflow prediction
3. Sustainability of source aquifer

• Well Completion Technology

1. Sand Control (ESS)
2. Tubing Size Selection
3. Downhole Flowmeters and Pressure Gauges Schematic of Basic Components of DF Well
4. Well Integrity and Deliverability (Osharode et al., 2010) Completions (Quttainah and Al-Hunaif, 2001)

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Innovation : Advanced Technology
Advanced Acid Stimulation
• Tools :
1. Advanced CTU stimulation (two stage process : near
wellbore cleaning phase and deep matrix
acidization)
2. A cavitational-based fluid pulsing tool with self-
adjusting nozzle
(Sajer et al., 2020)

Dump Flood Injector Performance

(Sajer et al., 2020)

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Dump Flooding Calculation
• Threshold pressure :

• Water injection and production :

• Material balance equation :

1. Oil Layer :
Dump Flooding Computing Program
(Haiyang et al., 2015)
2. Water Layer :

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Dump Flooding Calculation
• Liquid rate :

• At water breakthrough, based on Buckley-Leverett Theory :

• After water breakthrough :

Dump Flooding Computing Program

(Haiyang et al., 2015)

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Dump Flooding Calculation
• Rate after point at water breakthrough :

• Ratio PI at a point after water breakthrough to at water cut 0 :

(Haiyang et al., 2015)

• Noted that fluid rate is dependent on the productive and injective

capacity of the source and injected zones respectively, the friction loss in
the casing, and the difference between the reservoirs’ static pressures.
• Pipe friction is rate dependent and mostly measured through Newtonian
Fluid and turbulent flow model. Pipe friction can be utilized for casing size Dump Flooding Computing Program
design and rate control. (Haiyang et al., 2015)
(Davies, 1978)

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Dump Flood Simulation
• Simulation process :
1. Create geostatistical model
2. Production model
3. Pressure model
4. Compatibility of fluids
5. Fluid model
6. Rock-fluid model
7. Simulation model
8. History match
9. Forecast of scenarios
(Villaroel et al., 2015)

Simulation Processes for Dump Flooding (Villaroel et al., 2015)

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Result Example : Success Story
• Lower cost, economical, simple, effective, and quick methods.
Dump flood well has proved its ability to increase oil recovery
in W-field at the range of 40% (Shizawi et al., 2011).

• Dump Flood scenario increases oil production at 5 % with

one well and 12 % with three wells after optimization.
Implementation of dump flood in the East Basin of Ecuador is
positive. NPV also can be improved (Villaroel et al., 2015).

• When water-oil reserve ratio is less than 60, production

plateau extends and oil recovery increases with the increase
of WOR. If WOR is more than 60, the effect is negligible. The
later the timing of dump flooding conversion, the longer the
production plateau and the higher the recovery of the
reservoir will be (Huiyang et al., 2015).

• Waterflooding in Kiz carbonate reservoir can be expected to

yield an oil recovery factor of about 22 % (Yao et al., 1999) Simulation Results (Haiyang et al., 2015)

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Result Example : Success Story
• Implementation of conventional water injections (with surface facilities)
are practically impossible due to high costs of construction, maintenance
and water management. Many mature reservoirs were submitted to gas
injection processes and if they are injected by dumpflooding they will
become a kind of alternate injection (Acosta et al., 2018).

• Use of intelligent completion technology is a reliable and cost effective

solution for a controlled dump flood (Rawding et al., 2008).

• Tandem ESP system reduces rig time and is cost-effective than

encapsulated ESP system (Al-Hajeri et al., 2015).

• Boosted reservoir pressure is believed to increase the ultimate recovery

factor for the reservoir from 24 to 48%, adding 10 MBBL of additional
reserves (Kuoh et al., 2008). Dump Flood Project (Zadravec and Berkic, 2020)

• A 62% recovery factor is expected from prediction and the incremental

production profiles (Osharode et al., 2010)

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Result Example : Success Story
• A succesful implementation of cost-effective dumpflood
technique provided 18 % additional reserves (Noman et
al., 2015).

• Dump-flood was proven to be successful in Field B and

increased the RF by 8 %, recovering an incremental volume
of more than a quarter million barrels crude. It is more
attractive to proceed with the dump-flood first and
confirm the reservoir connectivity by monitoring the
Well Production History (Abdulhadi et al., 2019a)
offtake wells (Abdulhadi et al.,2019a).

• The new advanced acid stimulation has shown its

successfulness and sustainability in critical dumpflood
injector wells (Sajer et al., 2020).

• There was successful installation of the dumpflood

injection system in Chichimene Field with reduction in
CAPEX of 60 % and OPEX about of 30 % (Devia et al., 2017)

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Result Example : Challenges
• Monitoring and managing dumpflood wells and managing reservoir pressure maintenance. Other challenges
are difficulties with flood front control, water breakthrough, conformance management, and the inability to
quantify the crossflow rate in each well (Rawding et al., 2008).

• The actual challenges are excessive drawdown on aquifer, large production flux rates, formation
destabilization, and sand production (Rawding et al., 2008).

• Significant offshore well integrity issues such as different types of fluids in the wellbore, especially water with
different chemical compositions and physical properties cause corrosion and casing damage (Zadravec and
Berkic, 2020).

• Sand cake plugging less than 200 microns was found (Shizawi et al., 2011). Sand influx after perforation is
exacerbated by absence of an effective sand control mechanism (Osharode et al.,2010)

• 40 % cost overrun and few days NPT of installation were resulted (Kuoh et al., 2008).

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Screening Conclusions
Subsurface Properties
1. High porosity, high permeability, weak anisotropy and
good lateral connectivity reservoir and water layer
2. High PI and II
3. Light oil (low oil viscosity and high API gravity) reservoir
4. Preferably reservoir does not have high gas content,
thick gas cap, and condensate content
5. Preferably green field reservoir (above bubble point)
6. Low to moderate aquifer support
7. Compatible mobility ratio
8. Preferably suitable for scarce ground water (offshore)
9. Water layer pressure must be greater than oil layer
pressure Cross Section along Concession Line
(All references) (Quttainah and Al-Hunaif, 2001)

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 References
- Abdulhadi, M., Tran, T. V., Chin, H. V., Jacobs, S., Suggust, A. A., Usop, M. Z., . . . Yusop, Z. (2019). A Value Driven Approach for
Implementing a Simple and Low-Cost Natural Dump-flood in an Offshore Environment: Lessons Learned from the First Successful
Natural Dump-flood in Malaysia. SPE-194659-MS, 1-13.
- Abdulhadi, M., Tran, T. V., Mansor, N., Pon, Z. A., Chin, H. V., Jacobs, S., . . . Yusop, Z. (2019). First Natural Dump-flood in Malaysia: A
Succesful Breakthrough for Maximizing Oil Recovery in an Offshore Environment with Low-Cost Secondary Recovery. SPE-196498-MS, 1-
13.
- Acosta, E. R., Ortega, C. J., Riveros, G. V., Molina, L. R., & Rosales, E. E. (2018). A Doomed Reservoir Surprisingly Became a Mature
Reservoir with Potential: Water Dump Flooding Case Study in Boca Field . Rosales Zambrano Ingeniería, F.P. (RZI). Centro de Geociencias
Anzoátegui, C.A. (CGA), 1-12.
- Al-Hajeri, N., Anthony, E., Sharhan, G. A., & Jha, A. (2015). Tandem ESP-Packer Dumpflood Completion - A Successful Alternative to
Conventional Encapsulated ESP systems - Field Case Study. SPE-172549-MS, 1-7.
- Davies, C. (1972). The theory and practice of monitoring ‘and controlling dumpfloods. SPE AIME 3733, 1-16.
- Devia, N., Aguinaga, P., Gonzalez, C., Reina, J., Gil, L., Bonila, F., & Nino, L. (2017). Improving Oil Recovery in Mature Field With
Innovative Completion Solution Dumpflood Application. SPE-184950-MS, 1-8.
- Haiyang, S., Longxin, M., Haiying, H., Yongge, L., & Bo, L. (2015). Development mechanisms and influencing factors of dump flooding.
Petroleum Exploration and Development, 691-696.
- Kuo, H. L., Kang, M., & Staal, T. W. (2009). A Coiled-Tubing-Deployed Intelligent ESP Dumpflood System. SPE-95170, 1-11.
- Noman, M., Mehmood, F., Majeed, W., & Mufti, M. (2015). A Case Study of Improved Oil Recovery through Successful Application and
Effective Management of Dumpflood Water Injection Technique. SPE-181120-MS, 1-14.
- Osharode, C. O., Erivona, G., Nnadi, M., & Folorunso, K. (2010). Application of Natural Water Dumpflood in a Depleted Reservoir for Oil
and Gas Recovery - Egbema West Example. SPE 140634, 1-7.

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 References
- Quttainah, R., & Al-Hunaif, J. (2001). Umm Gudair Dumpflood Pilot Project, The Applicability of Dumpflood to Enhance Sweep &
Maintain Reservoir Pressure. SPE 68721, 1-9.
- Rawding, J., Al Matar, B., & Konopczyinski, M. (2008). Application of Intelligent Well Completion for Controlled Dumpflood in West
Kuwait. SPE 112243, 1-11.
- Sajer, A., Alsabee, A., Eldaoushy, A., Attia, A., Al-Sardi, M., & Al-Abdulmuhsen, S. (2020). Successful Application of Powerwave
Stimulation Technology In a Dumpflood Injector In Sandstone Reservoir In North Kuwait. SPE-199819-MS, 1-10.
- Shizawi, W., Subhi, H., Rashidi, A., Dey, A., Salmi, F., & Aisary, M. (2011). Enhancement of Oil Recovery through "Dump-Flood" Water
Injection Concept in Satellite Field. SPE 142361, 1-6.
- Villaroel, A., Mino, M. N., Estrella, K., & Perez, J. (2015). Methodology of Feasibility Study on Pilot Test for Dump Flood Completion
System. SPE-177039-MS, 1-27.
- Yao, C., Hill, N., & McVay, D. (1999). Economic Pilot-Floods of Carbonate Reservoirs Using a Pump-Aided Reverse Dump-Flood
Technique. SPE 52179, 1-5.
- Zadravek, D., & Brkic, V. (2020). Intelligent natural dump flooding well - Case study from the area of the western Persian/Arabian Gulf
and possible application in the Croatian mature oil field Beničanci. The Mining Geology Petroleum Engineering Bulletin, 21-31.

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