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Title: Screening improved recovery methods in tight-oil formations by injecting and producing through fractures

Abstract

Tight-oil reservoirs exhibit two characteristic behaviors that limit potential for improved recovery: (i) limited fluid movement from the unfractured matrix limits the potential to sweep additional oil towards the production wells with injection of a displacing fluid, (ii) the wettability of these reservoirs tend to be oil-wet which holds oil in relatively smaller pores, as compared to gas or water, making it difficult to mobilize that trapped oil. Primary oil production from these formations can decline to half of initial rates in the first year due to low permeability in the unfractured reservoir matrix, and a large amount of unrecovered oil remains in smaller pores that is not able to move out. To address these challenges, this study investigates the potential to improve oil recovery from tight-oil reservoirs by a method that includes injecting a fluid into the fractured reservoir to produce hydrocarbons from adjacent fractures intersecting the same wellbore. The injection and production through fractures has a potential economic advantage over huff-n-puff scheme such that there is no lag-period between injection and production. We compare the estimates of incremental oil recovery obtained by injecting water, immiscible CO2, and surfactant over the oil recovered by primary depletion (with no injection).more » The results suggest that injection of fluids may not always improve recovery from tight-oil reservoirs, especially in a heterogeneous reservoir (having different rock types) whose average matrix permeability is lower than 0.01 mD. In cases where recovery is improved over primary depletion, water flood and surfactant flood perform almost equally well with no noticeable difference between the two. Although, surfactant results in favorable fluid properties to mobilize oil, the reason surfactant did not perform well in tight-oil formation studied here is because the unswept oil is inaccessible due to small permeability, and not because of high capillary pressure.« less

Authors:
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2]
  1. National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Morgantown, WV (United States)
  2. China Univ. of Geosciences, Wuhan (China). Hubei Subsurface Multi-scale Imaging Key Lab., Inst. of Geophysics and Geomatics
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), Pittsburgh, PA and Morgantown, WV (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)
OSTI Identifier:
1461082
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1549236
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 116; Journal Issue: C; Journal ID: ISSN 0017-9310
Publisher:
Elsevier
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
42 ENGINEERING; Tight-oil; Shale; EOR; Water; Surfactant; Immiscible CO2

Citation Formats

Singh, Harpreet, and Cai, Jianchao. Screening improved recovery methods in tight-oil formations by injecting and producing through fractures. United States: N. p., 2017. Web. doi:10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2017.09.071.
Singh, Harpreet, & Cai, Jianchao. Screening improved recovery methods in tight-oil formations by injecting and producing through fractures. United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2017.09.071
Singh, Harpreet, and Cai, Jianchao. Thu . "Screening improved recovery methods in tight-oil formations by injecting and producing through fractures". United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2017.09.071. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1461082.
@article{osti_1461082,
title = {Screening improved recovery methods in tight-oil formations by injecting and producing through fractures},
author = {Singh, Harpreet and Cai, Jianchao},
abstractNote = {Tight-oil reservoirs exhibit two characteristic behaviors that limit potential for improved recovery: (i) limited fluid movement from the unfractured matrix limits the potential to sweep additional oil towards the production wells with injection of a displacing fluid, (ii) the wettability of these reservoirs tend to be oil-wet which holds oil in relatively smaller pores, as compared to gas or water, making it difficult to mobilize that trapped oil. Primary oil production from these formations can decline to half of initial rates in the first year due to low permeability in the unfractured reservoir matrix, and a large amount of unrecovered oil remains in smaller pores that is not able to move out. To address these challenges, this study investigates the potential to improve oil recovery from tight-oil reservoirs by a method that includes injecting a fluid into the fractured reservoir to produce hydrocarbons from adjacent fractures intersecting the same wellbore. The injection and production through fractures has a potential economic advantage over huff-n-puff scheme such that there is no lag-period between injection and production. We compare the estimates of incremental oil recovery obtained by injecting water, immiscible CO2, and surfactant over the oil recovered by primary depletion (with no injection). The results suggest that injection of fluids may not always improve recovery from tight-oil reservoirs, especially in a heterogeneous reservoir (having different rock types) whose average matrix permeability is lower than 0.01 mD. In cases where recovery is improved over primary depletion, water flood and surfactant flood perform almost equally well with no noticeable difference between the two. Although, surfactant results in favorable fluid properties to mobilize oil, the reason surfactant did not perform well in tight-oil formation studied here is because the unswept oil is inaccessible due to small permeability, and not because of high capillary pressure.},
doi = {10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2017.09.071},
journal = {International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer},
number = C,
volume = 116,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu Sep 28 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Thu Sep 28 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}

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Cited by: 53 works
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