A Review of Polymer Conformance Treatment: A Successful Guideline for Water Control in Mature Fields

Abstract

Waterflooding has been practiced for several decades as a means of secondary recovery. This process is successful if there is uniform resistance to the injected water. However, due to its nature of heterogeneity, the injected water flows to the less resistant path, resulting in poor sweep efficiency. As one of many candidates to overcome this problem, polymer systems mixing with several types of chemical agents have been researched and applied for several years. In this article, the authors reviewed and summarized the Relative Permeability Modification/Disproportionate Permeability Reduction and water shutoff treatments.

Keywords:

• conformance control
• disproportionate permeability reduction
• polymer flooding
• relative permeability modification
• water shutoff