View article

Unwanted water production is a serious issue in oil- and gas-producing wells. It causes corrosion, scale, and loss of productivity. One method of treating this problem is to chemically reduce unwanted water. This paper discusses the use of polymer systems for this purpose and presents a thorough review of available literature over the last decade. In this paper, field-application data for various polymer systems are summarized over the range of 40 to 150°C (104 to 302°F). These applications cover a wide range of permeabilities from 20 to 2,720 md in sandstone and carbonate reservoirs around the globe. Moreover, the review revealed that the last decade of developments can be categorized into two major types. The first type is polymer gels for total water shutoff in the near-wellbore region, in which a polymer is crosslinked with either an organic or an inorganic crosslinker. The second type is concerned with …