Water Quality Aspects of North Sea Injection Water

Abstract

This paper discusses current water quality assessment methods and some of the parameters that can affect the suitability of North Sea water as an injection fluid. Also included are general comments on the North Sea and its biomass. Examples are drawn from tests carried out during the commissioning of the Forties field seawater injection system in 1976-78.

Water Quality Control

“…Possible occurrence of red tide with absence of oxygen 5. Planktonic organisms suddenly can greatly increase apparent solids content in seawater (Mitchell and Finch, 1978). 6.…”

Biofouling in oilfield water systems—a review

“…Water quality requirements are demanding and filtration is required to remove 90-98% of all particles above 2 micrometres (Harvey & Blagden, 1985). There have, however, been considerable problems in achieving this especially during planktonic bloom periods when the system often has to be shut down (Finch, 1979;Mitchell & Finch, 1981;Edyvean & Sneddon, 1985).…”

“…Rupturing of copepods against either the initial Downloaded by [New York University] at 13:36 20 February 2015 154 JL LYNCH and RGJ EDYVEAN coarse screen or within the seawater winning pumps releases lipids and proteinaceous substances into the injection water. This in combination with the rigid external skeletons makes an excellent filter plugging material (Finch, 1979;Mitchell & Finch, 1981;Edyvean & Pearson, 1982;Edyvean & Sneddon, 1985). Although some of the lipids are undoubtedly removed during filtration, Mitchell & Finch (1981) consider that most of the lipidic substances bypass the fine filter elements to be pumped downhole where they may cause considerable pore blockage problems.…”

“…waterflooding (Mitchell & Finch, 1981;Anon, 1978;Sudbury et al, 1956;El-Hattab, 1982), and from oil storage systems offshore (King et al, 1986).…”

30 Years of Predicting Injectivity after Barkman & Davidson: Where are we today?

“…Although many articles have been published on this topic since then, the present state of its predictive power is rather poor. It is a frequent experience that predicted lifetimes or half-lives of injection wells are orders of magnitude below the actually observed values [2,3]. The authors' recommendation to determine the model parameters by membrane filtrations has often been considered to be the cause of these false predictions [4].…”