Oil and Gas
Oil and Gas | Reservoir Engineering
Optimizing Waterfloods
Format and Duration:
3 days
6 sessions
Course participants will acquire an understanding of the basic mechanisms that result in greater or lesser degrees of success for waterfloods. They will learn about methods to modify these mechanisms and how to make decisions to improve waterflood performance. Practical design considerations are discussed and worked examples are provided.
Schedule
Duration and Training Method
This is a classroom or virtual classroom course comprising a mixture of lectures, discussions, case studies, and practical exercises.
Course Overview
Learning Outcomes
Participants will learn to:
- Evaluate important water flood performance issues.
- Construct and use a fractional flow curve for water flood design, forecasts, diagnostics, and enhancement.
- Assess practical water flood surveillance methods and make maintenance (optimization) decisions.
- Judge whether your water flood is performing too slowly and propose methods of accelerating and enhancing waterflood performance.
- Evaluate how horizontal well technologies represent a "Game Changer" for existing and future waterflood schemes.
- Calculate vertical and horizontal well steady state water injection rates.
- Assess unique economic issues associated with waterfloods.
- Evaluate knowledge gained from a number of classic waterfloods.
- Evaluate the unique characteristics of decline curve analysis for waterflood remaining reserves assessments.
Course Content
DAY 1
- Introduction
- Physics of Waterflooding
DAY 2
- Water Quality and Injectivity Issues
- Waterflood Surveillance
- Pattern Design and Alteration
DAY 3
- Modern Waterflood Improvement and Optimization Methods
- Waterflood Economic Considerations
- Field Examples
Who Should Attend and Prerequisites
This course is directed towards reservoir engineers, non-reservoir engineers and engineeringmanagers involved in making decisions about improving an existing waterflood.
Instructors
Rob Lavoie
Background
Rob’s involvement in the upstream petroleum world began 38 years ago in 1976 when he worked on an oil rig as a roughneck and later as a well site geo-technologist (mud logger) at the age of 18. That experience convinced him of a life long desire to be involved in the oil and gas exploration and development business.
Rob was hired by Shell Canada Ltd. His initial work with Shell included: oil and gas field development studies, Enhanced Oil Recovery using CO2, Enriched Hydrocarbons, and Waterflood. Rob helped design, operate and interpret the Midale CO2 Flood Pilot project for Shell.
During the 1990’s Rob provided reservoir engineering leadership for TransCanada Pipelines. This included the development of a natural gas deliverability and supply forecasting application that generates a 25 year prediction of western Canadian natural gas supply. This project required a 2 year design and development period followed by 2 years of support and maintenance of the corporate software application.
Since 1996 Rob has provided oil and gas reservoir engineering consulting, advise, and training to the Canadian and international petroleum industry. From 2002 to 2011, Rob operated his own consulting company, CalPetra Research and Development Inc. His expertise ranges from natural gas forecasting and development planning, to enhance oil recovery development and economic analysis.
He lives in Calgary with his wife and two boys, is an avid bicycle commuter, and an advocate for a cleaner, lower carbon emission planet.
Affiliations and Accreditation
BSc University of Saskatchewan - Chemical Engineering
Society for Petroleum Engineering and Evaluators (SPEE)
Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)
Alberta Professional Engineering and Geoscience Association (APEGA)
Courses Taught
N606: Waterflood Design, Management, and Optimization
N967: Introduction to Reservoir Engineering
N969: Optimizing Waterfloods
Brian Weatherill
Background
Brian began his oil and gas career in 1973 as a junior reservoir engineer with Shell Canada. His initial assignment at Shell involved optimizing performance of waterfloods in the Midale Saskatchewan area, and then progressed to gaining a broad spectrum of petroleum engineering experience, including oil and gas field evaluation, wellsite geology and test operations, well test analysis, waterflood project design and surveillance, Enhanced Oil Recovery using CO2 and enriched hydrocarbons miscible flooding project design and surveillance and oilfield optimization and rehabilitation. He spent several years managing the petroleum engineering technology and research group at Shell’s Calgary Research Centre, in charge of the petrophysical, reservoir, production, facilities and corrosion engineering disciplines.
Subsequently, Brian had a four year assignment as Manager of Chemical Technology at NOWSCO Well Service, an international well servicing company based in Canada, responsible for management of the service laboratory and engineering technology development and implementation. Brian then spent two years as Chief Operating Officer of a private company developing oilfield production operations in Russia. Responsibilities included preparation of project development designs, operations plans, organisational plans and economic evaluations together with presentation of plans to management and the financial community.
In 1998 Brian joined RPS’ predecessor, Adams Pearson Associates (APA Petroleum Engineering) as a consulting reservoir engineer, specializing in petroleum engineering based evaluations, studies and project designs in a broad spectrum of oil and gas development and operations arenas. He has been the lead reservoir engineering specialist on numerous projects, reserve evaluations, reserve audits and resource evaluations in Western Canada, Canadian East Coast, Canada’s Arctic Frontier, Alaska, UK North Sea, Tunisia, Egypt, Tanzania, India, Albania, Croatia, Colombia, Argentina, Syria, Iraq, Romania, Hungary, Netherlands, France, Kazakhstan and Russia.
He lives in an “empty nest” Calgary with his wife Lee, and is an avid hockey, skiing, sailing, aviation, scuba and motorcycling enthusiast.
Affiliations and Accreditation
BAS University of British Columbia - Geological Engineering
SPE - Member
Alberta Professional Engineering - Member
APEGA - Member
Courses Taught
N606: Waterflood Design, Management, and Optimization
N967: Introduction to Reservoir Engineering
N969: Optimizing Waterfloods
Accreditation and Certification
CEU: 2.1 Continuing Education Units
PDH: 21 Professional Development Hours
Certificate: Certificate Issued Upon Completion
RPS is accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and is authorized to issue the IACET CEU. We comply with the ANSI/IACET Standard, which is recognised internationally as a standard of excellence in instructional practices.
We issue a Certificate of Attendance which verifies the number of training hours attended. Our courses are generally accepted by most professional licensing boards/associations towards continuing education credits. Please check with your licensing board to determine if the courses and certificate of attendance meet their specific criteria.