Development of a New Foam EOR Model From Laboratory and Field Data of the Naturally Fractured Cantarell Field

Abstract

Abstract As much of the oil in the Akal field of the Cantarell complex is contained in the low permeability oil wet matrix, foam injection has been proposed as a method to control fluid mobility in the fracture, with the added benefit of transporting surfactant into the matrix so that additional oil can be liberated through a reduction of interfacial tension between oil and water. Presented in this paper is the work flow undertaken during an extensive study of all available laboratory experiments and pilot single well foam injection tests. Laboratory experiments ranged from simple water plus surfactant imbibition tests and surfactant flooding tests, to more complex foam flooding in split core experiments and co-injection of surfactant and gas for generation of foam in-situ. There were three field pilot single well foam injection tests that were included in this analysis that were of the huff-and-puff design. This extensive analysis was done with the aid of numerical simulation that resulted in the development of a novel foam regeneration model that handles both mobility control and interfacial tension reduction effects. It is shown that with identical foam parameters, this model matches all laboratory core flood studies as well as the field pilot tests, showing that this foam model is capable of predicting foam performance in both laboratory and field settings. The foam components can be chosen to be defined as either gaseous or aqueous components and this choice is shown to affect the impact of capillary pressure on foam flow into the matrix. Also discussed in this paper are details of how the foam behaves when injected into a gas saturated zone where the foam combines with in-situ gas, resulting in higher foam qualities than was injected. It is demonstrated that foam mobility control as a function of foam quality is an important aspect for matching field performance. The significance of correct foam density calculations is also discussed using field scale models. The work done to match the many laboratory and field scale foam tests resulted in a significant improvement of the understanding of foam degradation, regeneration, permeability blockage, and flow in porous media and the phenomena responsible for generating incremental oil.