Methanol treatment in gas condensate reservoirs: A modeling and experimental study

Asgari, A.; Dianatirad, M.; Ranjbaran, Mohammad; Sadeghi, Asghar; Rahimpour, Mohammad Reza

doi:10.1016/j.cherd.2013.08.015

Cited by 34 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…4 The accumulated liquid will impede the flow of natural gas from the reservoir into the borehole, leading to a significant decrease in the well productivity. 7−11 The severity of condensate damage depends on several factors, mainly the reservoir formation and the natural gas composition. 4,12−15…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Chemical Treatment for Permanent Removal of Condensate Banking from Different Gas Reservoirs

et al. 2019

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Condensate banking represents a challenging problem in producing the hydrocarbon from tight gas reservoirs. The accumulation of liquid condensates around the production well can significantly impair the gas flow rate. Gas injection and hydraulic fracturing are the common techniques used to avoid the condensate development by maintaining the reservoir pressure above the dew point curve. However, these treatments are associated with high operational costs and large initial investment. This study presents a new chemical treatment for removing the condensate banking using thermochemical solutions. The presented treatment can cause a permanent impact on the treated formations. Chemicals are injected to react downhole and generate in situ pressure and heat in certain conditions. The generated pressure can raise the gas pressure above the dew point, and the generated heat can change the phase of the liquid condensate to gas. Kinetic analysis indicates that thermochemical fluids can increase the temperature and heat by 85 °C and 369 kJ/mol, respectively. In addition, the impact of clay content on the efficiency of thermochemical treatment was studied using coreflooding experiments. A condensate removal of more than 60% was achieved using the huff and puff injection mode. A good correlation between the rock permeability and the condensate removal efficiency was observed. Higher condensate removal was obtained for the rock samples with high permeability values. Moreover, the presence of clay minerals in the treated rock showed a minor impact on the condensate removal, indicating that the injected chemicals are able to stabilize the clay minerals and avoid clay damage. This research shows that thermochemical treatment can remove more than 60% of the condensate damage for different types of tight sandstones. Huff and puff treatment was found to be a very practical approach to diminish the condensate banking from different sandstone rocks. Also, this work confirms that thermochemical treatment can be applied in the clayey formation for removing the condensate blockage without affecting the clay stability or inducing clay damage. Ultimately, this study introduces a new chemical treatment in the gas industry, and the used chemicals are effective, environmentally friendly, and not expensive.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Chemical Treatment for Permanent Removal of Condensate Banking from Different Gas Reservoirs

et al. 2019

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“…The accumulation of condensate liquid poses a serious formation damage problem and thus may reduce gas productivity significantly [7][8][9]. The formation damage becomes more serious in tight reservoirs, where the condensate bank becomes immobile and blocks the gas flow [3,10,11]. Figure 1 illustrates a schematic diagram of the condensate bank in the near-wellbore region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…where the condensate bank becomes immobile and blocks the gas flow [3,10,11]. Figure 1 illustrates a schematic diagram of the condensate bank in the near-wellbore region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wettability alteration chemicals are injected to change the rock wettability to less liquid-wet state, thereby preventing the liquid accumulation [10,23,28,32]. Extensive laboratory experiments and numerical modeling have been conducted to evaluate the efficiency of wettability alteration treatments on mitigating the condensate bank [7,11,23,26,28,[33][34][35][36]. Coreflooding, contact angle, and spontaneous imbibition experiments are the common methods used to investigate the wettability alteration during condensate removal treatments [23,[37][38][39][40].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Novel Treatment for Mitigating Condensate Bank Using a Newly Synthesized Gemini Surfactant

et al. 2020

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Condensate accumulation in the vicinity of the gas well is known to curtail hydrocarbon production by up to 80%. Numerous approaches are being employed to mitigate condensate damage and improve gas productivity. Chemical treatment, gas recycling, and hydraulic fracturing are the most effective techniques for combatting the condensate bank. However, the gas injection technique showed temporary condensate recovery and limited improvement in gas productivity. Hydraulic fracturing is considered to be an expensive approach for treating condensate banking problems. In this study, a newly synthesized gemini surfactant (GS) was developed to prevent the formation of condensate blockage in the gas condensate reservoirs. Flushing the near-wellbore area with GS will change the rock wettability and thereby reduce the capillary forces holding the condensate due to the strong adsorption capacity of GS on the rock surface. In this study, several measurements were conducted to assess the performance of GS in mitigating the condensate bank including coreflood, relative permeability, phase behavior, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements. The results show that GS can reduce the capillary pressure by as much as 40%, increase the condensate mobility by more than 80%, and thereby mitigate the condensate bank by up to 84%. Phase behavior measurements indicate that adding GS to the oil–brine system could not induce any emulsions at different salinity levels. Moreover, NMR and permeability measurements reveal that the gemini surfactant has no effect on the pore system and no changes were observed in the T2 relaxation profiles with and without the GS injection. Ultimately, this work introduces a novel and effective treatment for mitigating the condensate bank. The new treatment showed an attractive performance in reducing liquid saturation and increasing the condensate relative permeability.

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“…Methanol displacement of liquid accumulations is attributed to the multi-contact-miscible technique [9]. Considerable enhancement in the relative permeability to gas are reported by using methanol injection for both sandstone and carbonate reservoirs [10,11]. The problem with solvent injection is that, the production enhancement will fade away after few months (3 to 6 months), which is attributed to the depletion of solvents during well production, leading to decrease their effects significantly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigation of Condensate Banking Using Thermochemical Treatment: Experimental and Analytical Study

et al. 2019

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Condensate banking is a common problem in tight gas reservoirs because it diminishes the gas relative permeability and reduces the gas production rate significantly. CO2 injection is a common and very effective solution to mitigate the condensate damage around the borehole in tight gas reservoirs. The problem with CO2 injection is that it is a temporary solution and has to be repeated frequently in the field in addition to the supply limitations of CO2 in some areas. In addition, the infrastructure required at the surface to handle CO2 injection makes it expensive to apply CO2 injection for condensate removal. In this paper, a new permanent technique is introduced to remove the condensate by using a thermochemical technique. Two chemicals will be used to generate in situ CO2, nitrogen, steam, heat, and pressure. The reaction of the two chemicals downhole can be triggered either by the reservoir temperature or a chemical activator. Two chemicals will start reacting and produce all the mentioned reaction products after 24 h of mixing and injection. In addition, the reaction can be triggered by a chemical activator and this will shorten the time of reaction. Coreflooding experiments were carried out using actual condensate samples from one of the gas fields. Tight sandstone cores of 0.9 mD permeability were used. The results of this study showed that the thermochemical reaction products removed the condensate and reduced its viscosity due to the high temperature and the generated gases. The novelty in this paper is the creation of micro-fractures in the tight rock sample due to the in-situ generation of heat and pressure. These micro-fractures reduced the capillary forces that hold the condensate and enhanced the rock relative permeability. The creation of micro-fractures and in turn the reduction of the capillary forces can be considered as permanent condensate removal.

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Methanol treatment in gas condensate reservoirs: A modeling and experimental study

Cited by 34 publications

References 13 publications

New Chemical Treatment for Permanent Removal of Condensate Banking from Different Gas Reservoirs

New Chemical Treatment for Permanent Removal of Condensate Banking from Different Gas Reservoirs

Novel Treatment for Mitigating Condensate Bank Using a Newly Synthesized Gemini Surfactant

Mitigation of Condensate Banking Using Thermochemical Treatment: Experimental and Analytical Study

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