W.W. Weiss, New Mexico Petroleum Recovery Research Center
Knowledge of oil-water relative permeability, polymer viscosity, and polymer retention is required to design a polymer flood. These properties are routinely determined in laboratory tests with reservoir rock and fluids. Lacking reservoir core material for laboratory measurements, Chain Oil Co. used a series of single well tests to define the required properties. Transient tests of buildup and falloff pressures were used to find the relative permeability end points, while a single well pumpin-pumpout test was conducted to determine polymer retention. Apparent reservoir dispersivity was also calculated. The field test results were used to design a J-Sand polymerflood. During polymer injection, pressure falloff tests were run to measure the in-situ viscosity at different polymer concentrations. Non-Newtonian type curves were used to analyze the transient data.