Decrease oil/water ratio: The concept of decrease oil water ratio is to increase water volume in the system without any changes in oil volume to meet new oil water ratio.
How can we decrease oil water ratio to 70/30?
Let’s make it simple so I still use the same information as my previous post. We start with 100 bbl of mud and we have the following information from the retort analysis.
Retort analysis:
% by volume oil = 56
% by volume water = 14
% by volume solids = 30
According to this retort analysis, the oil water ratio is 80/20 (learn how to calculate oil water ratio from a retort analysis) and there are 56 bbl of oil, 14 bbl of water and 30 bbl of solid from 100 bbl of mud.
In order to decrease oil water ratio, water must be added but oil volume remains the same. Therefore, 56 bbl of oil will represent 70% of oil ratio for the new system. We give X equals to the new total liquid volume (combination of oil and water volume).
Then; 70 = (56×100) ÷X
X = 80.0 bbl
Total liquid volume is equal to 80.0 bbl.
Oil volume is still the same but water volume will be added into the system. With this concept, the volume of water will added into the system can be described with the following relationship;
Water added = new total liquid volume – original volume
Water added = 80 – 70 = 10 bbl
If you have the total mud volume of 300 bbl, you will need 30 bbl of water added (10 x 300 ÷ 100) in order to decrease oil water ratio from 80/20 to 70/30
Ref book: Formulas and Calculations for Drilling, Production and Workover, Second Edition