Experimental study on lateral flooding for enhanced oil recovery in bottom-water reservoir with high water cut

The regular enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods in bottom-water reservoir aim to increase the vertical sweep efficiency. After multicycle chemical injection, the injected slug cannot effectively control the bottom water coning in the presence of fully developed water channel, decreasing the sweep efficiency and lowering economic efficiency. To improve the development effect of bottom-water reservoir, lateral flooding is proposed as a more cost-effective EOR technique by displacing the oil formation horizontally. In this study, three lateral flooding tests were performed in a three-dimensional physical model based on the geometric similarity criterion. Bottom-water reservoirs were simulated by sandpacking oil and water formations according to the parameters of the target oil reservoir. The bottom-water energy was supplied by an ISCO constant pressure, and the lateral flooding was conducted by an ISCO constant rate pumps. The oil recovery, water cut, pressure drop, and saturation variation maps obtained from these tests were recorded and analyzed. A comparison of these results between different crosslinked polymer slug tests shows that the improved oil recovery by lateral waterflooding can be mainly attributed to a significant increase in horizontal sweep efficiency. After 0.3 PV crosslinked polymer injection, about two-thirds of that was used to shut off the main water channels; the chemical packer, formed by the surplus polymer spreading along the oil/water interface under the drive of lateral injection, can inhibit bottom water from coning into the oil formation and prevent the crossflow. The 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 PV crosslinked polymer injection can increase oil recovery by as much as 11.35, 36.23, and 39.74% of the original oil-in-place (OOIP), respectively. This confirms that lateral flooding is an efficient EOR method in bottom-water reservoir.