An experimental and numerical study of chemically enhanced water alternating gas injection

In this work, an experimental study combined with numerical simulation was conducted to investigate the potential of chemically enhanced water alternating gas （CWAG） injection as a new enhanced oil recovery method. The unique feature of this new method is that it uses alkaline, surfactant, and polymer additives as a chemical slug which is injected during the water alternating gas （WAG） process to reduce the interfacial tension （IFT） and simultaneously improve the mobility ratio. In essence, the proposed CWAG process involves a combination of chemical flooding and immiscible carbon dioxide （CO2） injection and helps in IFT reduction, water blocking reduction, mobility control, oil swelling, and oil viscosity reduction due to CO2 dissolution. Its performance was compared with the conventional immiscible water alter- nating gas （I-WAG） flooding. Oil recovery utilizing CWAG was better by 26 % of the remaining oil in place after waterflooding compared to the recovery using WAG conducted under similar conditions. The coreflood data （cumulative oil and water production） were history mat- ched via a commercial simulator by adjusting the relative permeability curves and assigning the values of the rock and fluid properties such as porosity, permeability, and the experimentally determined IFT data. History matching ofthe coreflood model helped us optimize the experiments and was useful in determining the importance of the parameters influencing sweep efficiency in the CWAG process. The effectiveness of the CWAG process in pro- viding enhancement of displacement efficiency is evident in the oil recovery and pressure response observed in the coreflood. The results of sensitivity analysis on CWAG slug patterns show that the alkaline-surfactant-polymer injection is more beneficial after CO2 slug injection due to oil swelling and viscosity reduction. The CO2 slug size analysis shows that there is an optimum CO2 slug size, around 25 % pore volume which leads to a maximum oil recovery in the CWAG process. This study shows that the ultralow IFT system, i.e., IFT equaling 10 2 or 10 3 mN/ m, is a very important parameter in CWAG process since the water blocking effect can be minimized.

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.