Scaling and Sensitivity Analysis of Gas-Oil Gravity Drainage EOR

Abstract

Abstract Gas injection is one of the key enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. Significant volumes of the residual oil, remaining after earlier EOR methods, has been reported to be recovered through the gravity drainage mechanism, following the crestal gas injection in the horizontal, dipping or reef type oil reservoirs. The rate of oil recovery is controlled by the viscous/capillary/gravity forces, the rate of gas injection and oil production, the difference of oil and gas density, the oil relative permeability, the oil viscosity and number of other operational parameters. Risk analysis of these parameters helps to identify their relative dominance during gas-oil gravity drainage process. The interactions between various process controlling parameters is studied through development of scaling groups that govern the displacement process. Functional relationships between those scaling groups and their effect on the overall performance of immiscible gas-driven gravity drainage EOR are investigated in this study. This enables an estimation of fractional oil recovery for the combinations of scaling groups. The results of numerical sensitivity analysis through the reservoir simulations are presented to map the effective combinations of the dimensionless scaling groups for gas-oil gravity drainage EOR method.