Development of mobility control methods to improve oil recovery by CO/sub 2/. Final report

Technical Report · Wed Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 1984

OSTI ID:6886714

Heller, J P; Taber, J J

Because the efficiency of oil recovery from most reservoirs is disappointingly low, scientific research into the mechanisms of oil displacement promises to be very productive. An increasingly popular, but not fully understood or exploited oil recovery process uses highly compressed CO/sub 2/ as a displacing fluid to force the crude oil from reservoir rock. This report discusses concepts, methods, and results from a research project that investigated an important outstanding problem in CO/sub 2/ flooding. The problem is caused by the very low viscosity of even liquid CO/sub 2/, and results in the formation of frontal instabilities of viscous fingers during displacement. These fingers break through to the producing well, causing high rates of CO/sub 2/ use with lowered displacement efficiency, reducing the amount of oil that can be produced economically from the field. In the project, two general methods of thickening CO/sub 2/ were studied to reduce the incidence of early breakthrough and improve the efficiency of oil displacement by CO/sub 2/. The two additives are CO/sub 2/ foam and CO/sub 2/-soluble polymers to be used as direct thickeners. The first of these is closer to commercial use, but the second also shows great promise. The report also describes experiments to demonstrate both the usefulness and the mode of field use of these mobility control additives. 69 references, 15 figures, 13 tables.

• Research Organization: New Mexico Inst. of Mining and Technology, Socorro (USA). New Mexico Petroleum Recovery Research Center
• OSTI ID: 6886714
• Report Number(s): NMERDI-2-69-3307; ON: DE84900889
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
020300* -- Petroleum-- Drilling & Production
ADDITIVES
BENCH-SCALE EXPERIMENTS
CARBON DIOXIDE INJECTION
COLLOIDS
CONTROL
DATA
DISPERSIONS
ENERGY SOURCES
ENHANCED RECOVERY
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FLUID INJECTION
FOAMS
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
INFORMATION
MISCIBLE-PHASE DISPLACEMENT
MOBILITY
NUMERICAL DATA
OIL WELLS
PETROLEUM
POLYMERS
RECOVERY
STIMULATION
SURFACTANTS
SWEEP EFFICIENCY
WELL STIMULATION
WELLS