Investigation on the flow behavior and mechanisms of water flooding and CO2 immiscible / miscible flooding in shale oil reservoirs

Abstract

Shale reservoirs represent a significant untapped source of recoverable oil, and even a slight increase in recovery can yield substantial benefits. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the development of shale reservoirs due to their vast potential. Shale reservoirs are characterized by their intricate pore structures, ultra-low porosity, and extremely low permeability. Consequently, fluid flow within shale formations is highly complex, and the distribution of shale oil is diverse. There is an urgent need to conduct research into the flow behavior of shale reservoirs and the modes of crude oil occurrence within them, in order to support effective shale oil extraction in the field. In this work, we established a MCMP-MRT-LBM model considering nano-scale confinement effects such as slip and adsorption. The model is employed to simulate single pore channels and blind-end pores to investigate the distinct mechanisms involved in water flooding, CO2 immiscible flooding, and CO2 miscible flooding. Subsequently, the research explores the fluid flow characteristics associated with these three development methods within porous media, as well as the distribution of remaining oil. Then we compared the oil displacement efficiency, swept volume, actual liquid injection volume and displacement front position of the three fluids in porous media. The results reveal that water flooding exhibits superior displacement performance in single pore channels, while CO2 miscible flooding proves to be the most effective method for exploiting oil in blind-end pores. In porous media, CO2 miscible flooding successfully mitigates fingering phenomena and efficiently recovers crude oil located at blind-end and corner regions of the pores. The recovery efficiency achieved through CO2 miscible flooding is approximately 30% higher than that of water flooding and about 10% greater than CO2 immiscible flooding.