A New Method for Acid Stimulation Without Increasing Water Production

Successful acid stimulation requires a method to distribute the acid between multiple hydrocarbon zones. Because almost all producing wells contain sections of varying permeability, this can be a problem. Because acid is an aqueous fluid, it tends to enter the zones with the highest water saturation. These water zones also are often the highest-permeability zones, so acid stimulation often will result in large increases in water production. The full-length paper describes use of a new low-viscosity system that reduces formation permeability to water with little effect on hydrocarbon permeability and also diverts acid from high-permeability zones to lower-permeability zones.

View a Synopsis of SPE 103771 as published in JPT.

This article, written by Assistant Technology Editor Karen Bybee, contains highlights of paper SPE 103771, “A New Method for Acid Stimulation Without Increasing Water Production: Case Studies From Offshore Mexico,” by G.H. Reza, Pemex, and E. Soriano, SPE, L. Eoff, SPE, and D. Dalrymple, SPE, Halliburton, prepared for the 2006 SPE International Oil Conference and Exhibition, Cancun, Mexico, 31 August–2 September.