Abstract
From theoretical work related to production mechanisms to the development and application of preventative and remedial technologies, water control has been and continues to be a broadly studied subject in the oil industry. Although the last word appears to be elusive and trial and error approaches have led to mixed results, there are recent encouraging advances especially in complex systems such as those related to fractures where water arrival can seriously compromise field development plans.
The present work focuses on the study of polymer based RPMs in different petrophysical systems. Laboratory tests at reservoir conditions are documented for homogeneous, macro fractured and micro fractured sandstone cores representative from fields located in Colombian foothills, where active tectonics and compositional fluids are present.
According to relative permeability mesurements taken before and after treatment, RPMs performance can widely vary depending on the type of rock and water saturation range. Results suggest that a critical Sw exists in macrofractured systems above which RPM "swithches" its behaviour promoting higher Kw. Although this effect is not noted in homogeneous nor microfractured cores, there seems to be higher benefits in the last one in terms of kw reduction and final recovery.
Observations derived from this study are now of key value for planning and executing field tests throughout subject fields allowing to clasiffy target areas and tune expected benefits based on laboratory results.
