Streamline Simulation to Improve Polymer Enhanced Oil Recovery for a Mature Oil Field in Austria

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EOR as sequestration: Geoscience perspective

CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) has a development and operational history several decades longer than geologic sequestration of CO2 designed to benefit the atmosphere and provides much of the experience on which confidence in the newer technology is based. With modest increases in surveillance and accounting, future CO2 EOR using anthropogenic CO2 (CO2-A) captured to decrease atmospheric emissions can be used as part of a sequestration program.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Investigation of CO₂ sequestration options for Alaskan North Slope with emphasis on enhanced oil recovery

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2006Carbon dioxide (CO₂), the main component of greenhouse gases, is released into the atmosphere primarily by combustion of fossil fuels like coal and oil. Due to a conspicuous lack of any CO₂ sequestration studies for Alaskan North Slope (ANS), the study of CO₂ sequestration options will open new avenues for CO₂ disposal options, such as viscous oil reservoirs and coal seams, on the ANS. This study focuses on the investigation of CO₂ storage options by screening ANS oil pools amenable to enhanced oil recovery, evaluating phase behavior of viscous oil and CO₂ mixture, and simulating enhanced oil recovery by CO₂ flooding, and migration of CO₂ in saline aquifer. Phase behavior studies revealed that CO₂ gas was partially miscible with West Sak, at the pressure closer to the reservoir pressure. Compositional simulation of CO₂ flooding for a five-spot West Sak reservoir pattern showed an increase in percent recovery with an increase in pore volume injected, but at the expense of an early breakthrough. Sensitivity analysis of CO₂ flooding project was found to be strongly dependent on the variables such as oil price and discount rate. Investigation of supercritical CO₂ injection in saline formation didn't increase temperature in the permafrost region

Identification of technical barriers and preferred practices for oil production in the Appalachian Basin

The Appalachian Basin is characterized by great number of stripper wells and marginally producing oilfields that face a number of production problems. The purpose of this study was to identify the main problematic issues and preferred solutions for oil production in the Appalachian Basin. Investigation and identification of oil production problems and preferred solutions began with searches in the Society of Petroleum Engineer (SPE) library, and Petroleum Technology Transfer Council (PTTC) website. In addition, journals, workshop, conference were used to find additional information. Formal interviews were arranged with oil producers to gain more insight into problems in the Appalachian Basin. Accordingly, the following production problems were identified and ranked in order of decreasing importance: water production, poor understanding of reservoir heterogeneity, limited availability of compatible water for water injection, lack of sufficient reservoir data such as permeability, porosity, and primary production data for reservoir characterization, and paraffin and asphaltene causing operational issues. The technologies that are investigated included: water controls treatment, water-handling methods, and reservoir characterization using Artificial Neural Networks, paraffin and asphaltene control. In addition, corrosion problems and electrical cost reduction are discussed

Evaluation of various CO2 injection strategies including carbonated water injection for coupled enhanced oil recovery and storage

In view of current interest in geological CO2 sequestration and EOR, this study investigated water-based and gas-based CO2 injection strategies for coupled EOR and storage purposes. For water-based CO2 injection strategy, carbonated water injection (CWI) was investigated as an alternative injection mode that could improve sweep efficiency and provide safe storage of CO2. Despite its potential, CWI has not been very much studied. This thesis presents the details on the performance of CWI of moderately viscous oil (>100 cP), which has not been reported before. The effects of oil viscosity, rock wettability and brine salinity on oil recovery from CWI were also studied and significant findings were observed. To the author’s knowledge, no attempt has been made to experimentally quantify the CO2 storage by CWI process and to model the nonequilibrium effects in the CWI at the core scale using the commercial reservoir simulators. These are amongst the main innovative aspects of this thesis. The experimental results reveal that CWI under both secondary and tertiary recovery modes increase oil recovery and CO2 storage with higher potential when using light oil, low salinity carbonated brine and mixed-wet core. In this study, the compositional simulator overpredicts the oil recovery. The instantaneous equilibrium and complete mixing assumptions appear to be inappropriate, where local equilibrium was not in fact achieved during the CW process at this scale. The author evaluated the use of the transport coefficient (the a-factor) to account for the dispersive mixing effects, and found that the approach gives a more accurate prediction of the CWI process. For the gas-based CO2 injection strategies, a practical yet comprehensive approach using reservoir simulation, Design of Experiment (DOE) and the Response Surface Model (RSM) to screen for and co-optimize the most technically and economically promising injection strategy for coupled EOR and CO2 storage is presented. For the reservoir model used in this study, miscible WAG was found to be most economically promising, while miscible continuous CO2 injection was ranked as the most technically viable. The duration of the preceding waterflood, relative permeability (wettability) and injected gas composition are the three most significant factors to the profitability of oil recovery and CO2 storage through tertiary WAG injection

Water Shutoff in the Dunbar Field, Identification of Candidates and Production Gains

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