A new organic fiber composite gel as a plugging agent for assisting CO2 huff and puff in water channeling reservoirs

Abstract

The utilization of CO2 for enhancing oil recovery is an environmentally friendly way to dispose the industrial CO2 emissions. CO2 utilization ratio is defined as the volume ratio of produced oil to injected CO2. CO2 huff and puff technology can further improve oil recovery in high water cut reservoirs. However, as the huff and puff cycle increase, gas channeling is easy to happen and the utilization ratio of CO2 is reduced. Organic fiber composite gel is an effective plugging agent for gas channel. The major objective of this paper is to study the mechanisms of increasing CO2 utilization by injecting organic composite gel as the plugging agent. A large scale (40 cm*40 cm*3 cm) natural rock model with grooves is used to simulate the experimental conditions such as channeling channel and horizontal well. Two groups of experiments of direct CO2 huff and plugging agent assisted CO2 huff and puff were conducted. By comparing the pressure changes during the experiments, the mechanism of blocking the channel, balancing the CO2 displacement front and improving the utilization ratio of CO2 were analyzed. The experimental process was fitted by reservoir numerical simulation, and the remaining oil distribution, plugging agent distribution and CO2 distribution in CO2 huff and puff under different conditions were further demonstrated. Results show that compared with direct CO2 stimulation, the distribution of remaining oil saturation and reservoir pressure become more uniform and the utilization ratio of CO2 is greatly increased after injecting organic fiber composite gel. It is mainly due to the fact that the injected plugging agents flow preferentially into high water saturation region along the high permeability channels. Then, they can generate the organic fiber composite gel and remain in the channeling paths. As a result, the following injected CO2 will be forced to flow towards oil-rich regions radially and uniformly. Thereby, more CO2 can contact and react with the in-situ oil, resulting much higher oil recovery. In other words, the utilization ratio of CO2 is greatly improved. Taking Jidong oilfield as an example, it has been injected 19.2 × 104 t CO2 with the total oil production by 21.1 × 104 t. The utilization ratio of CO2 is calculated as high as 1.09. The observations of this study provide the theoretical basis for future application of organic fiber composite gel before CO2 flooding in the water channeling reservoirs.