Hydrocarbons exist in abundant quantity beneath the earth's surface. These hydrocarbons are generally classified as conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons depending upon their nature, geology, and exploitation procedure. Since the conventional hydrocarbons are under the depletion phase, the unconventional hydrocarbons have been a major candidate for current and future hydrocarbon production. Additionally, investment and research have increased significantly for its exploitation. Having the shift toward unconventional hydrocarbons, this study reviews in depth the technical aspects of unconventional hydrocarbons. This review brings together all the important aspects of unconventional reservoirs in single literature. This review at first highlights the worldwide unconventional hydrocarbon resources, their technical concept, distribution, and future supplies. A portion of this study also discusses the resources of progressive unconventional hydrocarbon candidates. Apart from this, this review also highlights the geological aspects of different unconventional hydrocarbon resources including tight, shale, and coalbed methane. The petrophysical behavior of such assists including the response to well logs and the discussion of improved correlation for petrophysical analysis is a significant part of this detailed study. The variation in geology and petrophysics of unconventional resources with conventional resources are also presented. In addition, the latest technologies for producing unconventional hydrocarbons ranging from fractured wells to different fluid injections are discussed in this study. In the end, the latest machine learning and optimization techniques have been discussed that aids in the optimized field development planning of unconventional reservoirs.
Hydrocarbon gas injection has proven to be one of the most efficient Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods, especially for tight and heterogeneous reservoirs with light to medium API oil, where water flooding is expected to be inefficient. Asphaltene precipitation and deposition, however, might occur due to pressure and fluids compositional changes with the gas injection. This complex phenomenon requires experimental and numerical investigation to understand the conditions at which flow impairment due to asphaltene formation damage may occur, resulting in lowering well flow capacity and in turn lower ultimate oil recovery.
In this experimental study, low permeability carbonate rock core samples were flooded with hydrocarbon gas under reservoir conditions. The floods were conducted on core samples of two different lengths representing two different rock types based on average rock permeability and Pore Throat Size Distribution (PTSD). Additionally, these core samples were flooded at two different operating conditions to mimic the average reservoir and the wellbore flowing pressure conditions. As a prelude to these experiments, Asphaltene Onset Pressure (AOP) and Asphaltene Onset Concentration (AOC) of the oil under study with the injection gas were established through NIR, SARA and Titration analysis.
Flow impairment due to formation damage by asphaltene precipitation and deposition was analyzed through permeability measurements before and after gas flooding. In all cases permeability reduction was observed. Permeability reduction was found to be function of rock types, reservoir pressure, and length of composite core samples. We assume that pore throat bridging by the larger size asphaltene particles caused higher permeability reduction in the samples of poorer rock types. Experiments conducted at lower pressures showed more damage. This is consistent with the lower AOC at lower pressure. Longer core samples give more time for asphaltene flocculation resulting in more asphaltene formation damage and more permeability reduction. Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) images of core plugs before and after the gas flooding process were found to be not conclusive with respect to direct detection of asphaltene deposition in the core samples and further work is planned to positively identify asphaltene deposition in the rock samples.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.