Oilfield Scale-Induced Permeability Damage Management During Waterflooding

Abstract The precipitation, accumulation and disposition process of oilfield sulphate scales is a major ongoing flow assurance problem in hydrocarbon production. This pose serious injectivity and productivity problems in a water flooded reservoirs. Several works and software packages such as multi-scale 6.0 and scalechem have been developed for predicting scaling tendency and average scales precipitation inside the reservoir but neglecting the fact that not all the occurring scale precipitation would cause formation damage near the well bore region. Some of the precipitated scales escape through the pore spaces to render havoc to flow in the production string since it is not all the scale precipitation inside the reservoir would plug the formation. For an adequate planning and monitoring of water injection, scale treatment schedule and disposition programme, there is the need to estimate the fraction of sulphate scales precipitation that occupies pore spaces and the corresponding degree of permeability damage at well bore vicinity. It is also imperative to evaluate the effects of oilfield scale induced permeability damage on the success of water flooding project. In this paper, an interactive software package has been developed for predicting the fraction of oilfield scales that occupies pore space and the corresponding permeability damage at different location away from the well bore. The software complement the existing oilfield scaling prediction software such as multi-scale 6.0, scalechem and scalbute recently reported by Fadairo et al. This is useful for adequate planning and controlling of water injection project, oilfield scale treatment schedule and disposition programme.