1887

Abstract

Summary

The preferential flow channels in oil reservoirs affect the performance of oil recovery processes, reducing the sweep efficiency and affecting the expected recovery factor. Preferential flow channels are generated by viscous fingering, gravitational segregation or porous media heterogeneity like natural fractures. In the Colombian foothills fields where the gas injection is the main method of recovery, the gravitational segregation and the presence of natural fractures strongly reduce the sweep efficiency. For these fields, foam generation is an alternative with high potential to increase sweep efficiency in gas displacement processes. Different foaming methodologies have been evaluated at laboratory core scale and field pilots with good incremental production, but with high operational expenses associated with high surfactant retention and lack of water injection facilities. Dispersed surfactant injection in a gas stream is a new proven method for foam generation. Different core flooding results and field pilots have shown that disperse injection increase cumulative oil production. However, there is a high level of uncertainty due to a few experimental and field information. For compensating the high uncertainty of the method, a mechanistic model was previously developed and validated with information from homogeneous cores. Nevertheless, it is necessary to extend the scope of the model to evaluate the effect of blocking foams in naturally fractured reservoirs, in this work we scale the previously built foam models to evaluate the disperse surfactant injection in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs through thin, high permeability, and horizontal layers to represent fractured systems and reproduce laboratory and field pilot results.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201900132
2019-04-08
2024-04-23
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Abbaszadeh, M., Rodriguez De-La Garza, F., Villavicencio, A. et al.
    [2016] Methodology of Foam-Surfactant EOR for Pilot Design Studies in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs. In: SPE EOR Conference at Oil and Gas West Asia. Society of Petroleum Engineers.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Alhamdan, M.R. et al.
    [2013] An Experimental and Numerical Study of Compositional Displacements in Fractured Reservoirs. In: SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. Society of Petroleum Engineers.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. AlQuaimi, B. and Rossen, W
    . [2017] Characterizing foam flow in fractures for enhanced oil recovery. In: IOR 2017-19th European Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Apaydin, O.G. and Kovscek, A.R
    . [2001] Surfactant concentration and end effects on foam flow in porous media. Transport in porous media, 43(3), 511–536.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bird, R.B
    . [2002] Transport phenomena. Applied Mechanics Reviews, 55(1), R1–R4.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Buchgraber, M., Castanier, L.M., Kovscek, A.R. et al.
    [2012] Microvisual investigation of foam flow in ideal fractures: role of fracture aperture and surface roughness. In: SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. Society of Petroleum Engineers.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Burden, R.L. and Faires, J.D
    . [2010] Numerical analysis. Cengage Learning, 9.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Christensen, J.R., Stenby, E.H. and Skauge, A
    . [2001] Review of WAG field experience. SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering, 4(2), 97–106.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. El-Banbi, A.H., Fattah, K.A., Sayyouh, H. et al.
    [2006] New modified black-oil PVT correlations for Gas condensate and volatile oil fluids. In: SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. Society of Petroleum Engineers.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Falls, A., Hirasaki, G., Patzek, T.e.a., Gauglitz, D., Miller, D., Ratulowski, T. et al.
    [1988] Development of a mechanistic foam simulator: the population balance and generation by snap-off. SPE reservoir engineering, 3(03), 884–892.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Green, D.W., Willhite, G.P. et al.
    [1998] Enhanced oil recovery, 6. Henry L. Doherty Memorial Fund of AIME, Society of Petroleum Engineers.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Islam, M.R., Hossain, M.E., Mousavizadegan, S.H., Mustafiz, S. and Abou-Kassem, J.H
    . [2016] Advanced Petroleum Reservoir Simulation: Towards Developing Reservoir Emulators. John Wiley & Sons.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Kam, S.I
    . [2008] Improved mechanistic foam simulation with foam catastrophe theory. Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects, 318(1–3), 62–77.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Kovscek, A., Patzek, T. and Radke, C
    . [1995] A mechanistic population balance model for transient and steady-state foam flow in Boise sandstone. Chemical Engineering Science, 50(23), 3783–3799.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Kovscek, A. and Radke, C
    . [1993] Fundamentals of foam transport in porous media. Tech. rep., Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (United States).
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Kovscek, A.R., Tadeusz, W.P., Radke, C.J. et al.
    [1997] Mechanistic foam flow simulation in heterogeneous and multidimensional porous media. SPE Journal, 2(04), 511–526.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Ocampo, A
    . [2016] Efecto de la Concentración del Químico Disperso en la Formación de Espumas en Medios Porosos. Master's thesis, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellin, Colombia.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Patzek, T.et al.
    [1985] Description of foam flow in porous media by the population balance method.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Romero-Flores, M., García-Cuéllar, A.J., Montesinos-Castellanos, A. and Lopez-Salinas, J.L
    . [2018] Modeling surfactant adsorption/retention and transport through porous media. Chemical Engineering Science, 183, 190–199.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Schlumberger
    [2007] Schlumberger Market Analysis.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Tiab, D. and Donaldson, E.C
    . [2015] Petrophysics: theory and practice of measuring reservoir rock and fluid transport properties. Gulf professional publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Valencia, J
    . [2016] Modelamiento del flujo y generación de espumas en medios porosos usando surfactante disperso en gas. Master's thesis, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellin, Colombia.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Valencia, J., Mejia, J. and Ocampo, A
    . [2018a] Modelling Sweep Efficiency Improvement By In-Situ Foam Generation Using A Dispersed Surfactant In The Gas Phase. In: ECMOR XVI-16th European Conference on the Mathematics of Oil Recovery.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Valencia, J., Ocampo, A. and Mejía, J.M.
    [2018b] Development and Validation of a New Model for In Situ Foam Generation Using Foamer Droplets Injection. Transport in Porous Media.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Walmsley, J.L., Schemenauer, R.S. and Bridgman, H.A
    . [1996] A method for estimating the hydrologic input from fog in mountainous terrain. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 35(12), 2237–2249.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Warren, J., Root, P.J. et al.
    [1963] The behavior of naturally fractured reservoirs.
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201900132
Loading
/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201900132
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error