This study has been accomplished by testing three different models to determine rocks type, pore throat radius, and flow units for Mishrif Formation in West Qurna oilfield in Southern Iraq based on Mishrif full diameter cores from 20 wells. The three models that were used in this study were Lucia rocks type classification, Winland plot was utilized to determine the pore throat radius depending on the mercury injection test (r35), and (FZI) concepts to identify flow units which enabled us to recognize the differences between Mishrif units in these three categories. The study of pore characteristics is very significant in reservoir evaluation. It controls the storage mechanism and reservoir fluid properties of the permeable units while pore structure is a critical controlling factor for the petrophysical properties and multiphase-flow characteristics in reservoir rocks. Flow zone indicator (FZI) has been used to identify the hydraulic flow units approach (HFUs). Each (HFU) was reproduced by certain FZI and was supposed to have similar geological and petrophysical properties. The samples were from four lithofacies, mA, CRII, mB1, and mB2. Because of the wide range of cored-wells samples (20 wells), this paper is updated the previous studies and indicated some differences in the resulting categories. It was noticed as results of this study that the rocks types of the lower Mishrif were mostly ranged from wackestone to packstone in the upper part of mB2 which reflected mid-ramp facies while the upper part of mB2 referred to shoal facies and for the mB1 unit the rocks types mostly range from packstone to grainstone with some points as wackestone marked as shoal and rudist bioherm facies. Grainstone relatively decreases with the increasing of depth from upper to lower Mishrif while wackestone and packstone indicated increasing in the same direction. The unit mA is marked as mesopores and macropores, while megapores and macropores feature increased in mB1 which has been noticed in the northern part of West Qurna oilfield due to increasing shoal and rudist bioherm facies, the mB2 unit revealed increasing in mesoporous and decreasing in megaporous. The upper Mishrif (mA) has three flow units, while the lower Mishrif (mB1, mB2) has eight flow units four for each reservoir unit.
Enhanced oil recovery is used in many mature oil reservoirs to increase the oil recovery factor. Surfactant flooding has recently gained interest again. To create micro emulsions at the interface between crude oil and water, surfactant flooding is the injection of surfactants (and co-surfactants) into the reservoir, thus achieving very low interfacial tension, which consequently assists mobilize the trapped oil. In this study a flooding system, which has been manufactured and described at high pressure. The flooding processes included oil, water and surfactants. 15 core holders has been prepared at first stage of the experiment and filled with washed sand grains 80-500 mm and then packing the sand to obtain sand packs samples for experiment. It was found that the best rate for water injection was 1.2 PV. Productively, while the optimum injection rate was 1.0 PV economically. The study observed that the cost of water injection in secondary recovery increased 700% when PV injected increased from 1.0 PV to 8.0 PV, while the recovery increased only about 8% (58.77 – 66.7%). The effects of concentration, salinity and temperature is also explored by examined many values of each parameter according to surface tension by using capillary rise method. It was found that the optimum conditions for surfactant flooding for sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) 0.01 molar for concentration, 5500 P.P.M for salinity and 70 °C for temperatures. These conditions was used to all kinds of surfactants that have been used in this study. The study results indicated that the best surfactant in both productively and economically was SDS with maximum recovery about 90% for each secondary and tertiary recovery and the optimum injection volume for all surfactants 1.2 PV . Another 12 Core holders with fixed pore volume were prepared for the second stage of the experiment. At this stage the pore volume was approximately constant and the variation included different values of SDS concentrations (0.1 and 0.001 Molar) and different values of salinity (1000 P.P.M and 3000 P.P.M) and temperature equal to 90 °C. Each value for concentration was experimented with the two values of salinity which in result obtaining four flooding conditions. Each condition was flooded by three injection rates (50, 120, 200 %). The results proved the results obtained from the first stage.
The special core analysis tests were accomplished on a set of core plugs for Mishrif Formation (mA, mB1, and mB2cde/mC units) in West Qurna/1 oilfield, southern Iraq. Oil relative permeability (Kro) data and the Corey-type fit of the data as functions of the brine saturation at the core outlet face for individual samples in the water-oil imbibition process to estimate relative permeability measurements by the centrifuge method were utilized. Identical correlations for oil and water relative permeabilities were extracted by steady-state and unsteady-state methods. For the mA samples, the gas-water capillary pressure curves were within a narrow range (almost identical) indicating that mA is a homogeneous unit. Kro curves for three mB2ab plugs were practically identical, that is referring to the homogeneity in the upper portion of the unit. The mB2 unit has a more solid‐phase concentration than other units. In addition, the general trend of low residual oil saturation is related to the raising in porosity but no reliable correlation between the residual oil saturation to water drive (Sorw) and Klinkenberg-corrected permeability (Kinf). Based on the correlation between the effective oil permeability at the initial water saturation [ko(Swi)] and (Kinf/f)1/2 for the high-permeability lithofacies mB1 plugs, ko(Swi) is approximately equal to or exceeds Kinf. While ko(Swi) was below Kinf for the other samples. New good empirical equations were obtained for effective gas permeability at final water saturation versus Kinf, as well as, for Kro and Krw versus saturation for all lithofacies.
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