Layer regrouping for water-flooded commingled reservoirs at a high water-cut stage

Layer regrouping is to divide all the layers into several sets of production series according to the physical properties and recovery percent of layers at high water-cut stage, which is an important technique to improve oil recovery for high water-cut multilayered reservoirs. Different regroup scenarios may lead to different production performances. Based on unstable oil-water flow theory, a multilayer commingled reservoir simulator is established by modifying the production split method. Taking into account the differences of layer properties, including permeability, oil viscosity, and remaining oil saturation, the pseudo flow resistance contrast is proposed to serve as a characteristic index of layer regrouping for high water-cut multilayered reservoirs. The production indices of multilayered reservoirs with different pseudo flow resistances are predicted with the established model in which the data are taken from the Shengtuo Oilfield. Simulation results show that the pseudo flow resistance contrast should be less than 4 when the layer regrouping is implemented. The K-means clustering method, which is based on the objective function, is used to automatically carry out the layer regrouping process according to pseudo flow resistances. The research result is applied to the IV-VI sand groups of the second member of the Shahejie Formation in the Shengtuo Oilfield, a favorable development performance is obtained, and the oil recovery is enhanced by 6.08 %.