Assessment of low-salinity waterflooding (LSWF) for enhanced oil recovery in the Miocene reservoir of the Ruby field, Cuu Long basin
Abstract
The paper evaluates the applicability of low-salinity waterflooding (LSWF) as an enhanced oil recovery method for the Miocene reservoir in the eastern area of the Ruby Field, Cuu Long Basin. The study is based on IOR/EOR screening, laboratory experiments, and performance assessment using reservoir simulation models.
Coreflood experiments conducted on physical reservoir models show that, following the high-salinity waterflooding (HSWF) stage, reducing the injection-water salinity to approximately 3,004 ppm increases the oil recovery factor by an additional 3.8 - 7.3% of pore volume (PV), equivalent to 4.5 - 14.3% of the original oil in place (OOIP).
Reservoir simulation results indicate that converting well RBA-8P from production to low-salinity water injection could yield approximately 3.35 million barrels of incremental oil in the pilot area. At the full-field scale, drilling three injection wells was identified as the optimal development option, with an estimated incremental oil recovery of 8.6 million barrels compared with the natural depletion scenario.
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