Mangala Polymer Flood Performance: Connecting the Dots Through in Situ Polymer Sampling

Abstract The paper describes the in-situ polymer sampling in Mangala which helped explain the performance of a large polymer flood in Mangala field in India. The Mangala field contains medium-gravity viscous crude oil. Notably, it is the largest polymer flood in India and 34% of the STOIIP has been produced in 11 years of production. Mangala was put on full field polymer flood in 2015, six years after the start of field production on water flood in 2009. Polymer flood added 93 million barrels above the anticipated water flood recovery in 6 years. Reservoir simulation models could replicate the initial Mangala polymer flood performance. However, the performance of the lower layers of Mangala (FM-3 and FM-4) continued to progressively deviate from modeling estimates. Equally importantly, the prediction of polymer breakthrough deviated significantly from modeling estimates. After 6 years and 0.7 pore volumes of polymer injection, it is apparent that field performance is equivalent to only 50-60% of the viscosity of the polymer injected at the surface. To better understand and quantify the nature and extent of polymer degradation it is necessary to gather representative down hole samples of polymer which has stayed in the reservoir conditions for a considerable length of time. Accelerated ageing studies in the lab showed HPAM can lose viscosity and precipitate after prolonged exposure to Mangala reservoir conditions with an increase in the degree of hydrolysis as the primary reason for the degradation. The concept of transfer function based on first order kinetics was used to extrapolate the laboratory results to Mangala reservoir temperatures. To test the hypothesis, a multi-disciplinary team implemented a plan to gather a representative polymer sample from the reservoir. The polymer sample had been in the reservoir for nearly 120 days and was captured in low shear and anaerobic conditions to minimize shear and oxidative degradation. The sample was tested for degree of hydrolysis by NMR method. The results confirmed that the level of hydrolysis of the injected HPAM did increase in the reservoir leading to lower viscosity and reduced lower amide concentration. Preliminary simulation studies using the concept of viscosity half-life were used to mimic the polymer degradation with time in the reservoir. The method is quite a simplistic representation of the thermal degradation, but it significantly improved the model's water cut predictions for lower layers and the full field polymer breakthrough predictions. The impact of polymer precipitation in the reservoir on the permeability is under study and it will drive the next phase of more detailed modeling.