1. BrightWater® – A Step Change in Sweep Improvement
- What is it?
- What isn’t it?
- Where did it come from?
Where can it go?

2. Poor Reservoir Sweep Efficiency Bypass Oil

3. BrightWater can help to improve Reservoir Sweep Efficiency, and produce the bypass Oil

4. Outline What is BrightWater? How does BrightWater improve waterflood?
Any field success?
How to use in mature fields?
Candidate selection
Tests
Implementation.
Conclusions

5. What is BrightWater®
BrightWater is a technology that improve the sweep efficiency of water flood by using a Novel robust particulate system for in–depth waterflood conformance control
Designed to overcome injectivity and cost limitations of classical polymer treatments. (i.e., injected as small particles then can become larger with time in the presence of a “trigger” - temperature)

6. BrightWater® History Contributor Involvement
BrightWater®, as a BP project, started in 1997
It was considered as a speculative, but high-reward project, and was proposed as a
Joint Venture project to the “MoBPTeCh” consortium which has now disbanded.
Nalco was identified as best potential development/supply partner, and joined as equal contributors. BP
Mobil, BP, Texaco, Chevron Nalco
Now: BP, Chevron, Nalco

7. BrightWater® – what it’s not
BrightWater material is NOT a classic viscous polymer
During injection it has viscosity very close to water
It cannot be damaged by shear during injection
It is not active initially
Totally different from conventional gel jobs.
No CAPEX – Simple to deploy

8. No Capex BW Particulate Dispersant
½” NPT fitting to be used for EC9368A injection
½” NPT fitting to be used for EC9360A injection
Well Head
Well House Floor
2” Well Line
Dispersant BW
Particulate

9. What is BrightWater® BrightWater is particles
The median of the particle size distribution is about 0.3 to 0.5 microns
BrightWater particle is supplied as a dispersion in hydrocarbon solvent
The active content in the dispersion is about 30%

10. What is BrightWater®
Bright WaterTM material is a tightly bounded, thermally activated particle injected as a dilute slug which flows with the water and pops open deep in the reservoir and blocks the swept zones.
0.1 to 1 micron
1 to 10 microns
Warmth
This allows chase water to be diverted into zones that were previously poorly swept.

11. Inert BrightWater Material

12. BrightWater Particles Pre-activated – Activated
This magnification is 10x greater than this one
Before Expansion
Scale bar is 500 nanometers
After Expansion
Scale bar is 5000 nanometers
A polymer particle which is able to propagate through rock pores without injectivity loss
Under the influence of heat the particle expands to a size which can block rock pore throats.

13. Diluted, inert BrightWater (after injection) Activated
Time and temperature

15. 5000 ppm
3900 ppm
4500 ppm

16. What is BrightWater® The injected sub-micron particles are inert
- they give virtually no viscosity or adsorption
- they are far smaller than the pores they move through
The expanded particles are “sticky”
- they have increased solution viscosity, showing they now interact with each other
- they act to restrict water flow rate in the reservoir
- the restriction can be permanent showing they are interacting with the porous rock

17. BrightWater are Small Crosslinked polymer particles (particle size) to propagate deep into reservoir (pore size)

18. What is BrightWater® The time before activation can be selected
The strength of the block can be selected
A complete block is not usually the aim or necessary

19. So how does BrightWater work in the reservoir?

20. Still at reservoir temp Cooled by injection
Usually there is a temperature front set up by cold water injection
Temperature
Front
Still at reservoir temp
Cooled by injection

21. Still at reservoir temp Cooled by injection
Usually there is a temperature front set up by cold water injection BW
Temperature
Front
Still at reservoir temp
Cooled by injection

22. Setting BrightWater at a temperature front

23. Setting at a temperature front can be very convenient and is the ideal and usual mode for hot reservoirs
But we may not need a temperature front
We can select the grade to control the setting time, and set at any temperature up to 80-90C

25. Setting BrightWater in an isothermal case

26. Typical treatment objectives:
Vertical conformance improvement by diverting water from a thief layer
Vertical and horizontal sweep improvement by diverting water from a channel
Slow down water cycling
- allow use of increased injection pressure
- allow use of increased drawdown at producers

27. BrightWater List of Field Trials
Minas, Indonesia (Chevron, 2001)
Arbroath, North Sea, UK (BP, 2002)
Milne Point and Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, USA (BP) (several, )
Strathspey field, North Sea, UK (Chevron, 2006)
Argentina (several, 2006)
Pakistan (BP, )
Alaska (several, 2007)
Being considered: more treatments in Indonesia Australia, Alaska and Gulf of Mexico, USA

29. Alaska Bright Water Applications

30. BP Alaska Field Trial
Trial of pattern treatment, three adjacent injectors, 03-13, and treated in
High water cut at low to medium total Pore Volume injected
Patterns mature to Miscible Injectant with breakthrough time 3 to 4 months
The FS2 Trial consisted of 3 patterns , 16-11, and These are in the south east portion of Prudhoe and isolated on the north by a fault, truncation on the east, and edge of the field on the south.

31. Design Process Candidate selection : criteria; know the reservoir
BrightWater formulation selection
Treatment volume and cost estimation
Implementation plan : QA, Contingency, monitoring
Post treatment plan
Looking through our files we noted that many of the gaps were similar among the reviewed projects, so sorted them into bins with common themes and called them “high level lessons learned”.
One common theme was, “Projects that participated in Planning Assists were better prepared for their Subsurface Technical Reviews.
Next numerous projects thought that the term alternatives applied to surface facilities only and therefore generated only one development alternative with one set of production profiles.
Many project’s Subsurface “front-end loading” efforts are compromised by very aggressive project schedules and/or insufficient resources. Also, too often Projects do not allow enough time or resources to implement the Review Team’s critical suggestions before their next phase gate.
And in a few cases, the recovery estimates and forecasts were based on inappropriate reservoir models.

32. Characteristics of good Candidate Reservoirs
Sandstone reservoirs
Vertical or horizontal high permeability contrast, Actual sweep efficiency less than anticipated. Presence of bypass oil.
Thief > 150 md; no direct interwell fractures.
Fluid transit time between injector and producers > 50 days
Injection water temperature lower than reservoir temperature (Temperature gradient between injector and producer desired but not necessary).
Down-hole temperature above 50 C.

33. BrightWater Potential Tests desired
Bottle test (injection water, temperature) – to select BrightWater formulation, if needed.
Sandpack Test – to confirm pop time at temperature, if needed.
Interwell water breakthrough estimate: field data; tracer, pressure test - to select BrightWater formulation or identify area of potential bypassed oil, if needed.
Block Test (actual core material) – to select BrightWater concentration. Needed only for very high or very low perm rock
Simple temperature model (distance between wells; reservoir and injection water temperature, rate and duration of water injection) - to estimate thief zone temperature profile.
Simple reservoir model – to estimate potential oil recovery. (Required)

34. Difference between BW and Polymer

35. Conclusions
BrightWater is a new robust pre-crosslinked polymer particle that can expand in size at design temperature and time.
There are successful field implementations (onshore and offshore)
Increase oil production and recovery.
Bullhead into injection line easily, even from a great distance or into subsea completion.
No facilities upset.

36. The Early stage Research team membersBP
Harry Frampton
Jim Morgan
ChevronTexaco
Steve Cheung
Rick Ng
Billy Surles
Les Munson
Nalco Energy Services
K.T. Chang
Dennis Williams

37. Thank you ! Questions?