TY - GEN
T1 - A new approach optimizing mature water-floods with electrokinetics-assisted surfactant flooding in Abu Dhabi carbonate reservoirs
AU - Ansari, Arsalan
AU - Haroun, Mohammed
AU - Sayed, Nada Abou
AU - Kindy, Nabeela Al
AU - Ali, Basma
AU - Shrestha, Reena Amatya
AU - Sarma, Hemanta
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - EOR technologies such as CO2 flooding and chemical floods have been on the forefront of oil and gas R&D for the past 4 decades. While most of them are demonstrating very promising results in both lab scale and field pilots, the thrive for exploring additional EOR technologies while achieving full field application has yet to be achieved. Among the emerging EOR technologies is the surfactant EOR along with the application of electrically enhanced oil recovery (EEOR) which is gaining increased popularity due to a number of reservoir-related advantages such as reduction in fluid viscosity, water-cut and increased reservoir permeability. Experiments were conducted on 1.5″ carbonate reservoir cores extracted from Abu Dhabi producing oil fields, which were saturated with medium crude oil in a specially designed EK core flood setup. Electrokinetics (DC voltage of 2V/cm) was applied on these oil saturated cores along with waterflooding simultaneously until the ultimate recovery was reached. In the second stage, the recovery was further enhanced by injecting non-ionic surfactant (APG) along with sequential application of EK. This was compared with simultaneous application of EK-assisted surfactant flooding. A smart Surfactant-EOR process was done in this study that allowed shifting from sequential to simultaneous Surfactant-EOR alongside EEOR The experimental results at ambient conditions show that the application of waterflooding on the carbonate cores yields recovery of approximately 46-72% and an additional 8-14% incremental recovery resulted upon application of EK, which could be promising for water swept reservoirs. However, there was an additional 6-11% recovery enhanced by the application of EK-assisted surfactant flooding. In addition, EK was shown to enhance the carbonate reservoir's permeability by approximately 11-29%. Furthermore, this process can be engineered to be a greener approach as the water requirement can be reduced upto 20% in the presence of electrokinetics which is also economically feasible.
AB - EOR technologies such as CO2 flooding and chemical floods have been on the forefront of oil and gas R&D for the past 4 decades. While most of them are demonstrating very promising results in both lab scale and field pilots, the thrive for exploring additional EOR technologies while achieving full field application has yet to be achieved. Among the emerging EOR technologies is the surfactant EOR along with the application of electrically enhanced oil recovery (EEOR) which is gaining increased popularity due to a number of reservoir-related advantages such as reduction in fluid viscosity, water-cut and increased reservoir permeability. Experiments were conducted on 1.5″ carbonate reservoir cores extracted from Abu Dhabi producing oil fields, which were saturated with medium crude oil in a specially designed EK core flood setup. Electrokinetics (DC voltage of 2V/cm) was applied on these oil saturated cores along with waterflooding simultaneously until the ultimate recovery was reached. In the second stage, the recovery was further enhanced by injecting non-ionic surfactant (APG) along with sequential application of EK. This was compared with simultaneous application of EK-assisted surfactant flooding. A smart Surfactant-EOR process was done in this study that allowed shifting from sequential to simultaneous Surfactant-EOR alongside EEOR The experimental results at ambient conditions show that the application of waterflooding on the carbonate cores yields recovery of approximately 46-72% and an additional 8-14% incremental recovery resulted upon application of EK, which could be promising for water swept reservoirs. However, there was an additional 6-11% recovery enhanced by the application of EK-assisted surfactant flooding. In addition, EK was shown to enhance the carbonate reservoir's permeability by approximately 11-29%. Furthermore, this process can be engineered to be a greener approach as the water requirement can be reduced upto 20% in the presence of electrokinetics which is also economically feasible.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84878326161&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84878326161
SN - 9781622769766
T3 - Society of Petroleum Engineers - Kuwait International Petroleum Conference and Exhibition 2012, KIPCE 2012: People and Innovative Technologies to Unleash Challenging Hydrocarbon Resources
SP - 978
EP - 997
BT - Society of Petroleum Engineers - Kuwait International Petroleum Conference and Exhibition 2012, KIPCE 2012
T2 - Kuwait International Petroleum Conference and Exhibition 2012: People and Innovative Technologies to Unleash Challenging Hydrocarbon Resources, KIPCE 2012
Y2 - 10 December 2012 through 12 December 2012
ER -