Modeling Wettability Alteration in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs

Delshad, Mojdeh; Najafabadi, Nariman Fathi; Anderson, G. D.; Pope, Gary A.; Sepehrnoori, Kamy

doi:10.2523/100081-ms

Cited by 29 publications

(32 citation statements)

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“…Injected water runs through the fractures in such reservoirs without imbibing into the matrix because of negative capillary pressure, which leads to low waterflood recovery [3]. Surfactant flooding and "huff-n-puff" techniques are being developed [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] to improve oil recovery from oilwet/mixed-wet, fractured carbonate formations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parametric analysis of surfactant-aided imbibition in fractured carbonates

Adibhatla

Mohanty

2008

Journal of Colloid and Interface Science

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parametric analysis of surfactant-aided imbibition in fractured carbonates

Adibhatla

Mohanty

2008

Journal of Colloid and Interface Science

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“…To validate the wettability model and its implementation in the simulator, the laboratory alkaline/surfactant imbibition experiments conducted at Rice University (Hirasaki and Zhang, 2004) were successfully modeled and reported in the previous progress report (Delshad, Pope, and Sepehrnoori, 2006).…”

Section: Task 2: Development Of Wettability Correlationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the purpose of completeness of this progress report, we review the model that is formulated and implemented in UTCHEM (Delshad, Pope, and Sepehrnoori, 2006).…”

Section: Task 2: Development Of Wettability Correlationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Wettability Alteration using Chemical EOR Processes in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs

Delshad¹,

Pope²,

Sepehrnoori³

2007

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The objective of our search is to develop a mechanistic simulation tool by adapting UTCHEM to model the wettability alteration in both conventional and naturally fractured reservoirs. This will be a unique simulator that can model surfactant floods in naturally fractured reservoir with coupling of wettability effects on relative permeabilities, capillary pressure, and capillary desaturation curves.

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“…The reservoir simulator used in this thesis is UTCHEM, a three-dimensional, multiphase, multicomponent chemical flooding simulator developed in the Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin (Pope et al, 1979;Data-Gupta et al, 1986;Saad et al, 1989;Bhuyan et al, 1990;Delshad et al, 1996;Delshad et al, 2006 the optimum salinity is 16,000 ppm TDS, the salinity of 7,000 ppm TDS was chosen for ACP slug by considering the activity of the crude and viscous microemulsion slightly above the optimum salinity. From the coreflood results, the oil recovery was 69.5% of residual oil saturation after waterflood and residual oil saturation from chemical flood (S orc ) was 13.5%.…”

Section: Utchem Simulatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential for Non-thermal Chemical Augmented Waterflood for Producing Viscous Oils

Kim

Delshad

2013

All Days

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Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) has regained its attention because of high oil price and the depletion of conventional oil reservoirs. This process is more complex than the primary and secondary recovery and requires detailed engineering design for a successful field-scale application. An alkaline/co-solvent/polymer (ACP) formulation was developed and corefloods were performed for a cost efficient alternative to alkaline/surfactant/polymer floods. Alkali reacts with acidic components of heavy oil (i.e. 170 cp in-situ viscosities) to form natural soap and significantly reduce the interfacial tension, which allows producing residual oil not contacted by waterflood or polymer flood alone. Polymer provides mobility control to drive chemical slug and oil bank. Co-solvent helps to improve the compatibility between in-situ soap and polymer and to reduce microemulsion viscosity. An impressive recovery of 70% of the waterflood residual oil saturation was achieved from an outcrop core where the remaining oil saturation after the ACP flood was reduced to only 13.5%. The results were promising with very low chemical utilization. UTCHEM reservoir simulator was used to model the coreflood experiment to obtain parameters for pilot scale simulations. Geological model was based on unconsolidated reservoir sand with multiple seven spot well patterns. However, facility capacity and field logistics, reservoir heterogeneity as well as mixing and dispersion effects might prevent the design followed in coreflood to be directly scaled for field implementation. Field-scale sensitivity simulations were conducted to optimize the design. The influence of chemical mass, slug size, polymer pre-flush, and injection rates on ultimate oil recovery was investigated. This research emphasizes the importance of small well spacing and good mobility control on recovery efficiency. The in-situ soap generated from alkali-naphthenic acid reaction not only mobilizes residual oil to increase oil recovery, but also enhances water relative permeability to increase injectivity. The paper discusses a cost effective chemical flooding design with an impressive oil recovery by adding relatively small solvent and polymer quantities to injected water. The potential for producing residual oil of the viscous oil is demonstrated in both the coreflood and pilot-scale simulations.

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Modeling Wettability Alteration in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs

Cited by 29 publications

References 0 publications

Parametric analysis of surfactant-aided imbibition in fractured carbonates

Parametric analysis of surfactant-aided imbibition in fractured carbonates

Modeling Wettability Alteration using Chemical EOR Processes in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs

Potential for Non-thermal Chemical Augmented Waterflood for Producing Viscous Oils

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