Investigation of replacing tracer flooding analysis by capacitance resistance model to estimate interwell connectivity

Interwell connectivity is an essential parameter for managing waterflooding operations in a field. Analysis of the tracer injection operation is a well-known approach to studying injected fluids distribution in a reservoir and toward producer wells. Developed in the early 2000s, capacitance-resistance model (CRM) is an analytical approach for waterflooding modeling and optimization. Production/injection data are used as input to model the mass balance and estimate parameters such as the interwell connectivity. In this work, we investigated the accuracy of applying the capacitance-resistance model to mimic a tracer test. Such an approach helps assess the connection between the wells and decide on further field development steps cheaper and quicker. Connectivity values estimated by tracer tests and CRM were analyzed and compared for synthetic and real fields. CRM was capable of modeling waterflooding and estimating production in both fields with acceptable accuracy. Parameters such as well spacing and fluid loss during the injection were considered to improve the accuracy of the CRM approach to calculate the interwell connectivity between injector/producer pairs. Our study showed that CRM could serve as a tool for a quick approximate estimation of interwell connectivity under certain assumptions and is recommended as a replacement for tracer flooding analysis, where the tracer test is not possible or is expensive.