Advanced Technique for Screening Enhanced Oil Recovery and Improved Oil Recovery Methodologies for a Petroleum Reservoir
Oil field development passes through several phases to maximize the hydrocarbon recovery: primary, secondary, and tertiary (enhanced). It is critical to manage the performance and decline of mature oil producing reservoirs. In the past, engineers and practitioners used to wait until water and gas breakthrough to quantify the efficiency of the gas and water flood performance. Analytical and numerical techniques aided with diagnostic plots (Water oil ratio (WOR) & gas-oil-ratio (GOR) vs. time or produced oil (NP)) have been extensively used by asset teams, in addition to analogue methods to make sound decisions. Factors such as reservoir structure/heterogeneity, fluid flow, well patterns, well spacing, technology, in addition to operational and economical parameters (market) affect the choice of the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methodologies for a certain reservoir.
It is imperative that the reservoir under consideration is screened for enhanced oil recovery methods against several factors mentioned earlier. This technology introduces a new workflow to screen enhanced oil recovery techniques combining geological reservoir, fluid and production parameters. The parameters consider minimum miscibility pressure (MMP), original oil-in-place (OOIP), oil rate, recovery factor, temperature, gas-oil-ratio, gas saturation, oil viscosity, API gravity, fluid composition, time to repressurize the reservoir, depth, depositional system based geological heterogeneity, Dykstra-Parsons & Lorentz coefficients, reservoir thickness and formation type. The screening is performed to help in identify additional opportunities to increase production and/or extend the life of the reservoir. It is important to study the geological, reservoir, petrophysical, production and operational aspects to develop a successful EOR strategy. The EOR methodologies that were screened are:
- Alkaline (A)
- CO2
- Gas Injection
- Nitrogen and Flue Gas
- Polymer
- Surfactant/Polymer (SP)
- Steamflooding
- Thermal Combustion
Chemical EOR approaches include alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) or surfactant-polymer (SP). Three different approaches were employed to screen EOR methodologies with different criteria. Each approach identified different sets of EOR techniques suitable for the reservoir mentioned above. These are UH screening, DOE screening, and advanced UH screening. Finally results and understandings all three approaches were combined to arrive at the recommendations. The details of these screenings and their results are described in the main document.