Field Applications of Capacitance-Resistive Models in Waterfloods

Application of fast, simple and yet powerful analytic tools, capacitance-resistance models (CRMs), is demonstrated with four field examples. Most waterfloods lend themselves to this treatment. This spreadsheet-based tool is ideally suited for engineers who manage daily flood performance. We envision CRM application to precede any detailed full-field numerical modeling. We have selected field case studies in a way to demonstrate CRM capabilities in different settings: a tank representation of a field, its ability to determine connectivity between the producers and injectors, and understanding flood efficiencies for the entire field or a portion of a field. Significant insights about the flood performance over a short time period can be gained by estimating fractions of injected fluid being directed from an injector to various producers and the time taken for an injection signal to reach a producer. Injector-to-producer connectivity may be inferred directly during the Course of error minimization. Because the method circumvents geologic modeling and saturation matching, it lends itself to frequent usage without intervention of expert modelers.