Using cyclic alternating water injection to enhance oil recovery for carbonate reservoirs developed by linear horizontal well pattern

In view of high water cut and low oil recovery caused by the unidirectional flow in linear pattern of horizontal wells for the carbonate reservoirs in the Middle East,this paper provides a novel approach to improve oil recovery by converting linear water injection to cyclic alternating water injection patterns including cyclic alternating water injection with apparent inverted seven-spot pattern or apparent five-spot pattern and cyclic differential alternating water injection.The main advantage of using this strategy is that the swept efficiency is improved by changing injection-production streamlines and displacement directions,which means displacement from two different direction for the same region during a complete cycle.This technology is effective in increasing the swept efficiency and tapping the remaining oil,thus resulting in higher oil recovery.Field application with three new patterns in a carbonate reservoir in the Middle East is successful.By optimizing injection and production parameters based on the cyclic alternating well pattern,the test well group had a maximum increase of daily oil production per well of 23.84 m^(3) and maximum water cut drop of 18%.By further optimizing the distance(keep a long distance)between the heels of injection and production wells,the waterflooding performance could be better with water cut decreasing and oil production increasing.

The Application of CO2-EOR in Ultra-Low Permeability Reservoir

CO2 flooding is a process whereby carbon dioxide is injected into an oil reservoir in order to increase output when extracting oil. Since 1952, Wharton obtained the patent concern CO2 flooding, CO2-EOR （CO2 flooding enhance oil recovery） has been one of research hot-spot around the world. According to the statistical data of 2006, there are total of 94 global CO2-EOR projects, including 65 low permeability oilfield projects （79% of the total）. Daqing Oilfield is the largest one of China, after more than 50 years of continuous development, oilfield comprehensive water cut has reached over 90%, and the difficulty of oilfield development has been gradually increasing. In recent years, low and ultra-low permeability reservoirs development have played a more and more important role accompany with low permeability reserves in proportion of the total reserves have been increasing year by year. But water-flooding recovery of low permeability reservoir is very low under the influence of reservoir poor properties and heterogeneity. As a kind of greenhouse gas, CO2 flooding can obtain good results for the low permeability reservoir in which the water flooding has proven ineffective. CO2 flooding Pilot Test was conducted under such background since Dec. 2002, over 10 years of practice has proved that CO2 flooding is an effective method to improve the development effect of low permeability reservoir, all experience during the mechanism study and field test should present important references for further larger-scale CO2 flooding projects.