Effect of Conformance Control Patterns and Size of the Slug of In Situ Supercritical CO2 Emulsion on Tertiary Oil Recovery by Supercritical CO2 Miscible Injection for Carbonate Reservoirs.

Abstract

The reservoir heterogeneity is the major cause of poor volumetric sweep efficiency in sandstone and carbonate reservoirs. Displacing fluids (water, chemical solution, gas, and supercritical CO2 (sc-CO2)) flow toward the high permeable zone. A significant fraction of oil remains in the low permeable zone due to the permeability contrast. This study used in situ sc-CO2 emulsion as a conformance control agent to plug the high permeable zone and improve the low permeable zone’s volumetric sweep efficiency in carbonate formation. We investigated the effect of two types of conformance control patterns and the size of sc-CO2 emulsion on tertiary oil recovery performance by sc-CO2 miscible injection for carbonate reservoirs at reservoir conditions. The conformance control patterns are achieved using two different approaches. In the first approach, the low permeable zone was isolated, and the diverting gel system, a 0.4 pore volume slug, was injected into a high permeable zone. In the second approach, the simultaneous injection of the diverting gel system, a 0.2 pore volume slug, was done on both the low and high permeable zones. The first sc-CO2 injection was conducted as a tertiary oil recovery mode to recover the remaining oil after water flooding. The diverting gel system was injected after the first sc-CO2 flood for the conformance control. The second or post sc-CO2 injection was conducted after the diverting gel system injection. The diverting gel system used in this study consisted of a polymer and a surfactant. An in situ emulsion was generated when the injected diverting gel system interacts with the sc-CO2 in the core plug. Results obtained from dual-core core flooding experiments suggested that the in situ sc-CO2 emulsion was generated successfully in the formation based on the different pressure increases and observation of the dual-core core flooding experiments. The volumetric sweep efficiency and oil recovery in both conformance control patterns were improved. The production performances were also compared for both conformance control models before and after the diverting gel system injection. The conformance control model 2 (simultaneous injection of the diverting gel system into low and high permeability cores) has a better choice to be applied in field application due to high recovery with a small sc-CO2 emulsion easy operation in the field.