Investigation on the Injection Pattern of Intermittent Natural Gas Flooding in Ultra-Low Permeability Reservoirs

Abstract

Natural gas is a viable oil displacement agent in ultra-low-permeability reservoirs due to its good fluidity. It can also cause gas channeling during continuous injection, which limits its oilfield application. In order to relieve gas channeling during natural gas flooding, the injection mode should be changed. The use of intermittent natural gas injection (IGI) after the continuous natural gas injection in an ultra-low-permeability reservoir is proposed, and optimization of the injection parameters is discussed. The results show that IGI can be divided into three stages, the gas injection stage, the well shutting stage and the oil production stage. With the increase in injection time, the oil recovery enhances obviously as a result of IGI because the gas fingering can be controlled at the well shutting stage, and the gas/liquid ratio grows slowly because the gas breakthrough can be reduced at the oil production stage. The oil recovery improves with the increase in cycle time of IGI, while the increase rate reduces evidently after the cycle time reaches 360 min. The oil recovery increment is low if the cycle index exceeds 3 in the ultra-low-permeability reservoir. Thus, the optimal cycle time for each round and the appropriate cycle index of IGI are 360 min and three rounds.