Low-Interfacial-Tension Foaming System for Enhanced Oil Recovery in Highly Heterogeneous/Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs

Abstract

Abstract Oil recovery in highly heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs is typically inefficient because of the high permeable fracture networks and unfavorable capillary force resulting from oil-wet matrix. Foam as a mobility control agent has been proposed to mitigate reservoir heterogeneity by diverting injected fluids from the highly permeable fractured zones into the low permeable unswept rock matrix, hence improving the sweep efficiency. This paper presents the use of a low-interfacial-tension foaming formulation to improve oil recovery in highly heterogeneous/fractured oil-wet carbonate reservoirs. The novel formulation providesboth mobility control and oil-water interfacial tension (IFT) reduction to overcome the unfavorable capillary forces preventingdisplacing fluids from entering oil-filled matrix. Thus, as expected, the combination of these two effects significantly improves oil recovery compared to either foam or surfactant flooding. In this research, the three-component surfactant formulation was tailored by phase behavior tests in seawater with crude oil from a targeted reservoir. The optimized formulation can simultaneously generate 10−2 mN/m IFT and strong foam in porous media with oil present, as demonstrated by IFT measurements and foam floodingtests. Foam flooding was investigated in a representative fractured core system, in which a well-defined fracture was created by splitting core lengthwise and precisely controlled of aperture by applying specific confining pressure. The foam flooding experiments reveal that the low-IFT foaming formulation in an oil-wet fractured Edward Brown dolomite recovers about 72% of oil while water flooding only recovers less than 2%,and it is more efficient than foam flooding lacking low oil-water IFT property.The core flood test results also indicate that low-IFT foam diverts mostly surfactant solution into matrix because of (1) the mobility reduction due to foam in the fracture network, (2) significantly lower capillary entry pressure for surfactant solution compared to gas and (3) the increase of mobility to water in the matrix by the low oil-water IFT displacing residual oil in the matrix. This selective diversion effect of the novel foaming system allows to carry out the surfactant flooding at low IFT condition in the low permeability matrix to recover the trapped oil, which is otherwise impossible with simple surfactant or high-IFT foam flooding in highly heterogeneous or fractured reservoirs.