SPE-170104-MS

The Polymer in Polymer Flooding: Is its Value Overestimated?

San Blas, P., BP and Vittoratos E., consultant to BP

Copyright 2014, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Heavy Oil Conference-Canada held in Alberta, Canada, 10 –12 June 2014.

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
Reservoir recovery processes are complex and typically entail several physical or chemical mechanisms.
Polymer flooding has often been depicted to be dominated by one mechanism: water viscosification
reduces the mobility ratio, and stabilizes the displacement front to increase oil recovery. Increasingly
though the contribution of mechanisms other than water viscosification is becoming understood. This
paper points out two novel insights into polymer flooding: (1) the intrinsic value of the polymer is likely
being overestimated and (2) the practice of operating the polymer flood with incomplete voidage
replacement may indeed be optimal.
The conversion of a conventional waterflood to a polymer flood entails significant injectivity reduction,
up to 50% or more. The maintenance of complete voidage replacement (VRR ⫽ 1) would thus require an
increase in the number of injectors, or a reduction of total production rate or both. As both interventions
reduce the economic returns, most projects operate with incomplete voidage replacement (VRR ⬍ 1). We
have previously reported that a VRR ⬍ 1 improves the waterflood response of heavy oil reservoirs. Thus
using the VRR ⫽ 1 waterflood as the comparison benchmark to the polymer response may overestimate
the value of viscosification – the intrinsic value of the polymer. To quantify this, we have performed
numerical simulations of polymer flooding for VRRs ranging from 0.4 to 1.4, deconvolving the relative
contributions of the viscosification and VRR ⬍ 1 mechanisms. We observe that a polymer flood operated
with VRR ⬎ 1 (above the oil bubble point) underperforms a polymer flood with a VRR ⬍ 1 by as much
as one third. We conclude that the intrinsic value of the polymer is overestimated.

Introduction
In the last decades, polymer flooding technologies in heavy oil reservoirs have been applied commercially
in a broader range of oil viscosities. The main interest in evaluating this technology for reservoirs with
live oil viscosities as high as 2,000 cp is helped mainly by three factors: (i) Increasingly the remaining
resources to be developed are heavier oils; (ii) the widespread use of horizontal wells allows for high rates
of viscous polymer injection and economic production rates of heavy oil; and (iii) High oil prices provide
economic upside to the polymer flood applications.
Although the reduction in the mobility ratio of the displacing fluids to the displaced fluid leads to a
reduction in viscous fingering improving the horizontal and the vertical sweep efficiency in comparison
with conventional waterfloods, there are other reservoir mechanisms that interact in the process and those
2 SPE-170104-MS

Table 1—Reservoir and fluid properties summary

Reservoir depth 3090 ft
Reservoir thickness 60ft
Initial reservoir pressure 1300 psi
Bubble point pressure 1100 psi
API ° 8.5
Live oil viscosity 1500 cp
Reservoir temperature 139 °F
Avg. Permeability 12 Darcy
Avg. Porosity 33%
Initial GOR 120 scf/stb
Rock compressibility 40E-6 1/psi

Figure 1—Well spacing sensitivities

interactions depend highly on how the polymer flooding is operated and designed. In particular, letting the
reservoir pressure drop below the bubble point actives several important reservoir mechanisms such as
rock compaction, fluid expansion, three phase flooding interaction and cul de sac effects between layers
of different permeability improving significantly the polymer flooding performance.
This paper presents reservoir simulation results in a heavy oil reservoir with a complex fluvial
depositional environment as an example to discuss and quantify the impact of the reservoir drive
mechanisms acting during polymer flooding. The real value of the polymer therefore is better understood
when the drive mechanisms involved in the process are considered in the overall project performance.
Reservoir simulation model description
A sector model was built based on an existing heavy oil reservoir, the average properties of the model are
summarized in the table 1.
The model’s injectors and producers were both horizontal wells parallel to each other as shown in the
figures 1a-c. Three different well spacings, 250ft (4 injectors and 4 producers), 500ft (2 injectors, 2
producers) and 1000ft (1 injector and 1 producer) were considered as a first level of sensitivity to evaluate
the reservoir performance during polymer and water flooding projects.
The grid dimensions are represented in the figures 1a-c. The total number of cells is 20 in the (i)
direction, 52 in the (j) and 78 in the (k) directions, being 93288 cells in total. The cell dimensions are 100
ft (i), 100 ft (j) and 3.7 ft (k). As the well spacing is reduced, the number of cells between the wells is
reduced also. A cell refinement evaluation was performed increasing the number of cells by 3 in the (i)
SPE-170104-MS 3

Table 2—Rock types definition

Rock type Avg porosity (v/v) Avg. Permeability (mD) Critical water saturation

1 0.35 15000 0.101

2 0.35 8800 0.12
3 0.33 2800 0.17
4 0.28 280 0.45
5 (Non reservoir) 0.24 2.2 0.59

Figure 2—Permeability and RockType Cross Section - 1000 ft well spacing example

direction (between the producer and injector wells) and it was verified that the results obtained are
representative of the physics of the model and not a numerical artifact related to model gridding.
The reservoir in study is characterized by thickly bedded sand bodies mainly deposited in a braided
fluvial setting as unconfined alluvial bar systems of braid plains. These strata are often interbedded with
thinly bedded, highly discontinuous, and often carbonaceous to coaly siltstone and mudstone beds that can
act as a vertical barrier during production.
Using a stochastic approach, a static model was built to represent these reservoir heterogeneities and
through the methodology used, 9 rock types were defined in the model, 4 of them as reservoir rocks and
5 defined as nonreservoir rocks. The table 2 summarizes the first 5 rock types sorted by rock quality.
In the figures 2.a-b and 3.a-b, are represented a cross section and a map view of the model permeability
and the rock type distribution respectively. As it is possible to observe, the reservoir is very heterogeneous
and there is a significant contrast in the reservoir permeability magnitude, representing a challenge to
avoid fingering phenomenon and to improve the sweep efficiency in the reservoir during the flooding
process.
The critical water saturation varies from 10.1% from rock type 1 to 59% in rock type 5, due to a
significant reduction in the rock pore throat as the rock quality decreases.
The relative permeability curves are presented in figure 4. For the water/oil relative permeability, the
end points are scaled according to the rock types defined in the table 2. The gas/oil relative permeability
values remain lower than 0.01 for a liquid saturation higher than 80%. The estimated critical gas saturation
is 2.5%. The three phase relative permeability is defined in the figure 4.c.
Polymer properties
Reconstituted sandpacks based on grain size analyses were used as core materials for corefloods
experiments to evaluate the feasibility of injecting polymer in the reservoir. The figure 5 shows a core thin
4 SPE-170104-MS

Figure 3—Permeability and Rock Type Map View - 1000 ft well spacing example

Figure 4 —Relative Permeability

section analysis of the reservoir in study describing the grain size, sorting and mineralogy typically found
in a rock type 1 previously described in the table 2.
Rheology properties measurements were performed at the reservoir conditions in 5 different polymers,
including 3 polyacrylamides and 2 associative polymers, varying the polymer concentration from 750 ppm
to 2500 ppm and the shear rate from 1 to 100 s-1. The figure 6 shows the polymer viscosity at a shear rate
of 7 s-1, using a fresh water source. As the minimum value, 60 cp was measured at 1500 ppm for the
different evaluated polymers.
The figure 7 shows the sandpack experimental results. A significant recovery incremental of 30% after
water flooding was observed and therefore the experiment verified the potential application of this
technology in the reservoir.
These results were historically matched with a commercial reservoir simulator and the polymer
parameters were tuned and used for field scale reservoir simulations. Based on the lab experiments, the
table 3 shows a summary of the general polymer properties considered in the analysis.
SPE-170104-MS 5

Figure 5—Thin Section Analysis

Figure 6 —Polymer viscosity in source water

Reservoir simulation results

Water and the 60 cp polymer were injected in the reservoir model as previously shown in the different
wells patterns. After 40 years of injection in the model, figures 8.a-b, 9.a-b and 10.a-b show the ultimate
6 SPE-170104-MS

Figure 7—Sandpack Experiment - Water and Polymer Flooding

Table 3—Average - Polymer Properties

Effective Polymer Viscosity (cp) 60
Residual resistance factor 1
Polymer concentration (ppm) 1500
Adsorption (mg/100g of rock) 10

Figure 8 —Recovery Factor versus Hydrocarbon Pore Volume Injected (%) - 1000 ft well spacing

recovery factor versus the Hydrocarbon Pore Volume Injected (HPVI %) of polymer and water respec-
tively, considering a well spacing of 1000ft, 500 ft and 250 ft and a Voidage Replacement Ratio (VRR)
of 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1 and 1.2.
The polymer performs better than the water flooding due to the combination of the mechanism acting
in the reservoir and the improvement in the fluids mobility ratio. At 1000 ft well spacing, the maximum
oil recovery factor for polymer flooding was 17% versus 14% in water flooding. Reducing the well
SPE-170104-MS 7

Figure 9 —Recovery Factor versus Hydrocarbon Pore Volume Injected (%) - 500 ft well spacing

Figure 10 —Recovery Factor versus Hydrocarbon Pore Volume Injected (%) - 250 well spacing

spacing to 500 ft, the difference between polymer and water flooding was even bigger, a maximum oil
recovery factor of 22% for polymer versus 15% in water flooding was observed and finally, at 250 ft well
spacing the maximum oil recovery factor was 23% without significantly increase the oil recovery factor
compared to the previous well spacing and increasing the volumes of water injected.
In addition to the well spacing and the improvement in the mobility ratio, these high oil recovery
factors for a 1500 cp heavy oil reservoir are highly dependent on the Voidage Replacement Ratio.
For the different well spacing, the oil recovery factor increase and the volumes of fluid injected
decrease when the VRR was reduced to values lower than 1. At 1000 ft well spacing, the VRR that
maximizes the oil recovery factor is 0.4, when the well spacing was reduced, consecutively, the optimum
VRR was displaced to 0.6 at 500 ft well spacing and 0.8 at 250 ft well spacing.
Analysis of results
The figure 11 shows the average reservoir pressure behavior for the best case 500 ft well spacing at
different VRR scenarios; as expected, with a VRR⫽1, the reservoir pressure is kept relatively constant.
Applying a VRR⬍1, the reservoir pressure starts declining in the model at the same time that the polymer
is injected. The lower the VRR, the more severe is the reservoir pressure decline.
With the VRR⫽1 scenario, the contribution of the low permeability rocks was minimized and
significant hydrocarbon volumes were bypassed in the reservoir. In order to quantify the contribution for
8 SPE-170104-MS

Figure 11—Reservoir pressure trends - VRR sensitivities

Table 4 —Reservoir simulation sensitivities - Rock types impact

Cumulative Oil/Cumulative Cumulative Oil/Cumulative
Cumulative Oil (MMSTB) Cumulative Water Inj (MMBw) Water (STB/Bw) Water (STB/Bw)

Rock types VRRⴝ0.6 VRRⴝ1 VRRⴝ0.6 VRRⴝ1 VRRⴝ0.6 VRRⴝ1

I 4.36 4.55 8.82 18.14 0.49 0.25

I to II 5.46 5.57 10.28 18.88 0.53 0.30
I to III 6.41 6.27 11.53 18.22 0.56 0.34
I to IV 6.79 6.5 12.06 18.24 0.56 0.36
I to V 6.86 6.5 12.11 18.24 0.57 0.36
I to VI 8.01 7.31 12.80 18.29 0.63 0.4
I to VII 8.01 7.31 12.80 18.29 0.63 0.4
I to VIII 8.01 7.31 12.80 18.29 0.63 0.4

each rock type defined in the model and previously represented in the table 2, both scenarios, VRR ⫽ 0.6
versus VRR ⫽ 1 were compared progressively deactivating and activating the cells by rock type as
follows: (i) Only rock type 1 (ii) Rock type 1⫹2 (iii) Rock type 1⫹2⫹3 and so on until rock type 8. The
table 4 shows the results for these sensitivities, for a 500 ft well spacing pattern (One producer and one
injector).
When only the rock type 1 is activated in the model, the VRR ⫽ 1 shows a higher cumulative oil versus
the VRR ⫽ 0.6 after 40 years of reservoir simulation, primarily because less water was injected during
this period. On a per barrel water injected basis, however, VRR ⫽ 0.6 demonstrates superior process
efficiency (Dividing the total cumulative oil versus the total cumulative water). When the rock type III and
the other rock types with higher clay content and lower permeability are activated, further process
improvement makes the VRR ⫽ 0.6 case superior even on a time basis.
The total volume of water injected is reduced by more than 30% from VRR⫽1 strategies to VRR⫽0.6
significantly reducing the cost associated with water injection and handling. Both the increases in the
cumulative oil and the reduction of the volumes of water injected made the VRR⫽0.6 case a better
economic scenario than VRR⫽1 for the evaluated period.
figure 12 compares contribution percentage by rock type for these two scenarios. With a VRR⫽0.6,
rock type 1 has a lower contribution percentage to the total cumulative oil obtained in the model as
SPE-170104-MS 9

Figure 12—Rock types cumulative oil contribution percentage VRRⴝ0.6 versus VRRⴝ1

Figure 13—Oil saturation variation (Initial oil saturation - oil saturation after 40 years of simulation)

compared against the VRR⫽1, but a significant increase in contribution percentage is observed for the rest
of the rock types, obtaining a better performance when the VRR⬍1.
The figure 13.a-b shows a cross section of the oil saturation variation (Oil saturation at initial condition
– Oil saturation after 40 years) for VRR⫽0.6 versus VRR⫽1. The VRR⫽0.6 case allows a better vertical
interconnection between the layers draining more volumes from the reservoir. The figure 14 shows the oil
rate and water cut for both scenarios: the breakthrough time is delayed from 791 to 1004 days, bringing
additional benefits to the polymer production performance.
For the VRR⫽1 case, the main mechanism of reservoir drive is the water displacement process. For
the VRR ⬍ 1 process, material balance analysis indicates that the rock compaction and fluid expansion
mechanisms are also activated and contribute meaningfully, as represented in figure 15. The rock
compaction is a more important mechanism in comparison with the fluid expansion during undersaturated
conditions (⬍5000 days), but as soon as the reservoir pressure crosses the bubble point pressure (1100
10 SPE-170104-MS

Figure 14 —Oil Rate and Water cut sensitivities for VRRⴝ1 and VRR-0.6

Figure 15—Reservoir drive mechanism VRRⴝ0.6 versus VRRⴝ1

psi), the fluid expansion starts influencing the production performance in a more substantial way.
Compaction and fluid expansion can contribute as much as 25% of the total drive acting in this reservoir
when the saturated conditions are achieved.
In saturated conditions, gas segregation from the low permeability zones and the creation of a
secondary gas cap was observed in these simulations. The figure 13.c-d shows the gas saturation after 40
years of simulation for VRR⫽1 and VRR⫽0.6 respectively.
Gas coming out of solution from the low permeability zones helps to reduce the oil saturation
displacing the oil contained in that zone to the preferential channels in the reservoir.
Polymer injection sensitivities
Sensitivities were performed injecting at different reservoir pressures, 1300 psi (Initial reservoir pressure),
1100 psi (bubble point pressure) and 900 psi (Saturated condition). For the cases 1100 psi and 900 psi,
primary production was implemented before injection in order to decrease the reservoir pressure. In the
figure 16 is plotted the ultimate recovery factor versus HPVI after 40 years of polymer injection at
different VRR values, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1, 1.2 and 1.4.
SPE-170104-MS 11

Figure 16 —RF versus HCPVI (%) for polymer flooding starting at 1300 psi, 1100 psi ⴖBubble pointⴖ and 950 psi

Table 5—Sensitivity parameters

VRR 0.6 0.8 1
Reservoir thickness (ft) 20 40 80
Bypassed Volumes (MMSTB) 4.5 3.3 0.7
Rock compressibility (1/psi) 1E-05 8E-05
Critical gas saturation 1% 6%
Gas Corey exponent 2.5 5

As is possible to observe in the figure 16, starting injection at the bubble point pressure allowing
primary production from 1300 psi (Initial reservoir pressure) to 1100 psi is a more efficient process than
the other two scenarios, higher recovery factors injecting less volumes of polymer was obtained.
When the well spacing is larger, the reservoir heterogeneity influences the polymer flooding (VRR⬍1)
performance in a more important way because the injected fluid have to travel longer distances, therefore,
the contribution from the low permeability zones is bigger when the reservoir pressure is allowed to
decline and it helps to improve the sweep efficiency. This phenomenon explains why the VRR that
maximized the oil recovery factor was displaced from 0.4 to 0.8 from 1000 ft well spacing to 250 ft well
spacing in the reservoir simulation results.
To better understand how these mechanisms act, they were separately evaluated in the following
section.

Deconvolving the mechanism acting during a VRR<1 during polymer

flooding
To quantify the effect for each mechanism previously described and their impact in the polymer flooding
performance, a homogenous model was built to separate the reservoir geological heterogeneities from the
rock compaction and fluid expansion mechanism. The fluid and the reservoir properties used in the
homogenous model are described in the table 1 and in the table 2 as rock type II.
The sensitivities performed in the model are summarized in the table 5. The reservoir thickness varies
from 20 to 80 feet to quantify the impact of increasing the STOOIP and therefore the influence of the fluid
expansion and the rock compaction mechanism at differents VRR. The rock compressibility varies from
10 to 80 microsips and the gas relative permeability curves as well as the critical gas saturation from 1
to 6% to evaluate the impact of the rock compaction and the gas dynamic in the fluid expansion
mechanism.
In order to represent how the reservoir heterogeneity and the bypassed volumes, due to the high
permeability magnitude contrast in the reservoir, impact the polymer injection performance, an additional
12 SPE-170104-MS

Figure 17—Homogenous model - reservoir thickness sensitivity

sensitivity was performed positioning a low permeability layer above the horizontal wells. The volume
contained above the low permeability layer varies from 0.7 to 4.5 MMSTB.
Reservoir thickness
The figure 17.a-c shows the oil recovery factor versus the HPVI for the scenarios 20, 40 and 80 feet of
SPE-170104-MS 13

Figure 18 —Homogenous model - Rock compressibility sensitivity

reservoir thickness and a material balance analysis indicating the contribution fraction of the fluid
expansion and the rock compaction for each scenario considering a VRR ⫽ 0.6.
When the reservoir thickness increase, as well as the STOOIP, the fluid expansion and the rock
compaction influence increase, improving the performance of the polymer injection when the VRR⬍1.

Rock compressibility
The rock compressibility affects directly the rock compaction mechanism drive of the reservoir. Consid-
ering the 80 feet reservoir thickness scenario, two sensitivities were performed using 10 microsips as a low
case and 80 microsips for the high case.
figure 18 presents the oil recovery factor versus HPVI for these two sensitivities. As expected,
strategies with VRR⬍1 perform better when the rock compaction drive mechanism increased.

Gas relative permeability curves

Using the Corey equation for gas/oil relative permeability, two sensitivities were performed to quantify
the impact of retaining or creating a free gas phase in the reservoir during the polymer injection process.
The Corey equation (1) was used to generate two scenarios, a low case with a critical gas saturation
of 1% and a high case with a critical gas saturation of 6%.
(1)

Where:
Krg⫽ Gas relative permeability
Swi: Initial water saturation
Cg: Corey gas exponent
Sgc: Critical gas saturation
Sorg: Residual oil saturation to gas
The figure 19.a-b shows the result for these two scenarios. When the critical gas saturation is increased,
the performance of the VRR⬍1 improve significantly in comparison with a VRR⫽1.
When the critical gas saturation increases, the gas continues to grow in the porous medium reducing
the oil saturation and without creating a free gas phase in the reservoir.
A similar behavior might be expected if a foamy oil condition exists during production, defined by
Maini (2001) as a non-Darcy form of two-phase flow where the gas remains dispersed in the heavy oil.
Based on these results, additional studies are recommended to evaluate this impact.
14 SPE-170104-MS

Figure 19 —Homogenous model - Critical gas saturation sesitivity

Figure 20 —Adimensional cumulative STOOIP versus adimensional cumulative KxTh

Reservoir vertical heterogeneity

A layer of 10 feet of reservoir thickness and permeability of 200 md was positioned in the homogenous
model above the horizontal wells completed in the middle of a 35 feet thick sand with a permeability of
8.8 Darcy. Above the low permeability layer was created another layer with a high permeability of 8.8
Darcy varying the reservoir thickness to 35 feet (4.5 MMSTB sand), 26 feet (3.3 MMSTB) and 6 feet (0.7
MMSTB). This second high permeability/porosity layer represents the volumes of the reservoir that can
be bypassed due to contrast in the reservoir permeability magnitude.
The figure 20 shows the nondimensional cumulative STOOIP (Cumulative STOOIP divided by the
total STOOIP) versus the nondimensional cumulative of (Permeability x Thickness) for these three
scenarios, starting from the top of the reservoir to the bottom, in the figure it is possible to observe a
variation in the slope of the curve, corresponding with the location of the 10 foot thick, low permeability
layer (permeability of 0.2 D).
The figure 21.a-c shows a schematic representation of these three scenarios as well as the recovery
factor versus the HPVI for a VRR of 0.6, 0.8, 1 and 1.2. When the STOOIP contained in the sands above
the low permeability sand is bigger, the benefits of injecting polymer with a strategy of VRR⬍1 increase
over VRR⫽1 strategy.
SPE-170104-MS 15

Figure 21—VRR sensitivity under different bypassed volumes

Mechanism sensitivities comparison

The maximum cumulative oil incremental (Np) obtained in the different sensitivities previously described
in the table 5 when the VRR⬍1, divided by the cumulative oil obtained with VRR⫽1 ((Max Np) / (Np
16 SPE-170104-MS

Figure 22—Sensitivity results - 1000 ft well spacing

Figure 23—Sensitivity results - 500 ft well spacing

Figure 24 —Sensitivity results - 250 ft well spacing

VRR ⫽1) was plotted versus the HPVI, considering well spacings of 250 feet, 500 feet and 1000 feet,
represented in the figures 22, 23 and 24.
The cumulative oil incremental was higher for the different scenarios when the HPVI was lower than
30% and this oil incremental decline at a higher HPVI, approaching to a value ⫽1, which means that the
obtained cumulative oil in the sensitivities is the same than with a VRR⫽1 scenario and therefore the
benefits of VRR⬍1 is diminished as the HPVI increase.
At larger well spacing (1000 feet), the gas relative permeability and the rock compressibility sensi-
tivities shows higher Np/Np(Vrr⫽1) ratio compared with the other parameters. When the well spacing is
reduced to 250 feet, the influence of the rock compaction and gas expantion is still important but the
reservoir thickness and the bypassed volumes become more significant in the polymer flooding perfor-
mance.
SPE-170104-MS 17

Conclusions
● Polymer EOR injection with horizontal wells results in recoveries of ~20-24%
compared to 10-15% obtained with water flooding for the evaluated heavy oil
reservoir. (Live oil viscosity ⫽ 1500 cp).
● If the VRR is not properly managed, the polymer EOR injection can destroy value,
especially at larger well spacing.
● An optimization of VRR for which the oil recovery factor is maximized was
observed. At larger well spacing, lower VRR was required to improve the polymer
flooding performance.
● The activation of the solution gas drive and the rock compaction were identified as
the main variables controlling the success of a VRR⬍1 polymer flooding project.
These two mechanisms are highly sensitive on the rock compressibility, relative
permeability and reservoir geological heterogeneities.

Acknowledgement
We want to thank BP for permission to publish this paper and our colleagues for all the input and insights
that helped us develop this project. Many thanks to Chris West, Josef Chmielowski, Doug Pollock, Victor
Vega, Fernando Leza, Zee Zhu, Jose Carias and Guillermo Rivas for all the support during the project
development.

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