Effect of neglecting geothermal gradient on calculated oil recovery

Reduced recovery rate with time is a common challenge for most of the oil producing reservoirs. Water flooding is one of the most common methods used for enhanced oil recovery. Simulating water-flooding process is sometimes carried out without considering the effect of geothermal gradient, and an average temperature is assumed for all the grid blocks. However, the gradient plays a significant role on the reservoir fluid properties. So neglecting its effect might result in a large error in the calculated oil recovery results, especially for the thick reservoirs, which in theory can show significant variations in temperature with depth. In this paper, first, advancing the waterfront during injection into a geothermal oil reservoir is discussed. Then, the performance of considering either an average temperature or gradient temperature, are considered and compared with each other. The results suggest that assuming a fixed average reservoir temperature with no geothermal gradient, can lead to a pronounced error for calculated oil recovery. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.