The Performance of Surfactant-Polymer Flooding in Horizontal Wells Consisting of Multilayers in a Reservoir System

Abstract

Surfactant-polymer (SP) flooding has been demonstrated to be an effective method to recover oil in the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) stage when water flooding is no longer relevant. Theoretically, adding surfactant causes the reduction of the interfacial tension between oil and water in pores, therefore reducing the residual oil saturation, whereas the sweep efficiency will be significantly improved by the polymer injection as a result of proper mobility control. With regard to the well patterns, water flooding has demonstrated a high productivity in horizontal wells. Recently, other EOR processes have been increasingly applied to the horizontal wells in various well patterns. In this study, the efficiency of SP flooding applied to horizontal wells in various well configurations is investigated in order to select the best EOR performance in terms of either a technical or economical point of view. Furthermore, the reservoir is assumed to be anisotropic with four different layers that have same porosity but different permeability between each layer. The study figures out that, the utilization of a horizontal injector and producer always gives a higher oil production in comparison with the reference case of a conventional vertical injector and producer; however, the best EOR performances that demonstrate the higher oil recovery and lower fluid injected volume than those of the reference case are achieved when the production well is located in bottom layers and parallel with the injection well at a distance. While the location of producer decides oil productivity, the location of injector yet affects the uniformity of fluids propagation in the reservoir. A predefined feasibility factor is also taken into consideration in order to reject the infeasible cases that might give a high oil production but require a higher injected volume than the reference case. This factor is used as an economic parameter to evaluate the success of the EOR performance. The simulation is carried out in a quarter five-spot pattern reservoir with the support of the Computer Modeling Group (CMG) simulator. Understanding the predominant EOR performance of SP flooding in horizontal wells will help to select the best plan to obtain the highest oil recovery when considering economic issues.

Chemical Flooding in Heavy-Oil Reservoirs: From Technical Investigation to Optimization Using Response Surface Methodology

“…A heavy-oil reservoir model with quarter five-spot pattern is in the STARS simulator of the Computed Modelling Group (CMG). Both the injector and producer are horizontal wells installed in the near-bottom layers owing to the high productivity [27]. All possible potential chemical flooding sequences are grouped and investigated separately before carrying out the pre-evaluation stage where the general commercial assessments are primarily considered.…”

Numerical studies on the effects of various complicated barrier configurations on sweep efficiency in surfactant/polymer flooding

“…Practically, the performance of an enhanced oil recovery project is significantly influenced by the complicated heterogeneity of the reservoir system [20,21]. Therefore, the process designs have to cover all of the potential contexts that can affect overall the performance, such as the conditions of the reservoirs, geological issues, fluid injectivity, and so on, with the assistance of a useful simulator [22].…”

Performances of Guerbet Alcohol Ethoxylates for Surfactant–Polymer Flooding Free of Alkali

“…Nevertheless, side effects of using alkalis have been revealed in field tests and practical applications, such as scale and formation damage , resulting from the reaction of alkalis with reservoir rock components and divalent ions in connate water, where the produced deposition can cause severe pipe/tube plugging and blocking of porous pores. , Surfactant–polymer flooding free of alkali has therefore been suggested as a replacement for ASP flooding …”