Abstract
Traditional conformance applications, when defined as the management of unwanted water and gas, normally have been applied late in the life of the reservoir. In these cases, the success of the conformance treatment has been totally dependent upon an accurate description of the reservoir. Obviously, without a proper determination of the reservoir conditions, the underlying reasons for the water and/or gas problems cannot be assessed, and the most appropriate treatment cannot be applied. It has now been shown that a conformance treatment can be even more effective if it is applied early in the life of the reservoir. In other words, a preventive or a proactive conformance treatment may be more successful and less costly to apply than a reactive treatment if analysis determines that the reservoir conditions are such that water and gas production are likely to occur as the field matures.
Thus, since accurate reservoir description is the key to whether a treatment will be effective, regardless of whether applied early or late in the life of the well, it is obvious that the proper diagnostic and analytical tools are critical to the success of any conformance application. This fact will be proven in this paper through use of a database that contains over 900 actual conformance treatments that show that a success ratio exceeding 90% is obtained when the proper diagnostic tools are used.
To apply the concept of preventive conformance, the availability of a diagnostic tool is extremely important. This tool should have the capability to determine the type and location of reservoir fluids and whether the encountered water is mobile. A powerful tool for providing this information is the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) Logging tool.
This paper shows how coupling reservoir description in general and conformance in particular to MRI technology through the application of MRI logs can benefit the process. It also illustrates the technical and economical value of this technological integration through the use of simulated examples. The simulated examples were created using a commercially available 3-D, 3-phase simulator.
