The development of natural gas in tight sandstone gas reservoirs via CH4-CO2 replacement is promising for its advantages in enhanced gas recovery (EGR) and CO2 geologic sequestration. However, the degree of recovery and the influencing factors of CO2 flooding for enhanced gas recovery as well as the CO2 geological rate are not yet clear. In this study, the tight sandstone gas reservoir characteristics and the fluid properties of the Sulige Gasfield were chosen as the research platform. Tight sandstone gas long-core displacement experiments were performed to investigate (1) the extent to which CO2 injection enhanced gas recovery (CO2-EGR) and (2) the ability to achieve CO2 geological storage. Through modification of the injection rate, the water content of the core, and the formation dip angle, comparative studies were also carried out. The experimental results demonstrated that the gas recovery from CO2 flooding increased by 18.36% when compared to the depletion development method. At a lower injection rate, the diffusion of CO2 was dominant and the main seepage resistance was the viscous force, which resulted in an earlier CO2 breakthrough. The dissolution of CO2 in water postponed the breakthrough of CO2 while it was also favorable for improving the gas recovery and CO2 geological storage. However, the effects of these two factors were insignificant. A greater influence was observed from the presence of a dip angle in tight sandstone gas reservoirs. The effect of CO2 gravity separation and its higher viscosity were more conducive to stable displacement. Therefore, an additional gas recovery of 5% to 8% was obtained. Furthermore, the CO2 geological storage exceeded 60%. As a consequence, CO2-EGR was found to be feasible for a tight sandstone gas reservoir while also achieving the purpose of effective CO2 geological storage especially for a reservoir with a dip angle.

There are often plenty of horizontal planes of weakness in reservoir formations, especially in shale formations, as reported for a number of oilfields. Once the weak-plane fails, the formation will become unstable, and can easily undertake slippage across a large area along its interface. The number of casing failure caused by slippage of weak-plane has been increasing significantly in recent years. Wells with casing failure are concentrated in an increasing number of areas. However, there has been lack of research efforts on how to optimize cementing and completing parameters in order to prevent casing failure induced by formation slippage. To address the problem, a more advantage completing type has been elected by qualitative analysis. The calculation model of critical slip displacement in un-cemented conditions was established. A finite model was used to test and verify the analysis and the model. The critical slip displacement of casing shear damage was also calculated. In this study, a new cementing practice was then proposed by optimizing casing parameters according to API standards, and a new research method was also put forward by proposing new casing materials to effectively mitigate casing failure caused by formation slippage for the future. Modeling results indicate casing failure induced by formation slip is different from conventional casing damage. The slip displacement needs to be used to measure casing impairment inside of maximum stress. Casing elongation is the key parameter for controlling casing shear failure. The type that keep the weak-plane un-cemented exhibits a larger critical slippage displacement .So the casing with lower grade and smaller thickness is recommended in weak-plane if the casing could meet all other down-hole requirements. The new concept is very different from the common belief that the good quality cement and higher grade and thicker casing are safer. If the elongation of casing can be improved by 60%, the critical casing failure slippage displacement can be increased by 21.40%. In this study, a new casing design and well completion method to prevent casing failure caused by formation slippage was proposed, and some guidance was provided for manufacturing casing with new material that can effectively mitigate or delay casing damage.

Accuracy defects exist when modeling fluid transport by the classical capillary bundle model for tight porous media. In this study, a three-dimensional simplified physical model construction method was developed for tight sandstone gas reservoirs based on the geological origin, sedimentary compaction and clay mineral-cementation. The idea was to reduce the porosity of the tangent spheres physical model considering the synergistic effect of the above two factors and achieve a simplified model with the same flow ability as the actual tight core. Regarding the wall surface of the simplified physical model as the boundary and using the Lattice Boltzmann (LB) method, the relative permeability curves of gas and water in the simplified model were fitted with experimental results and a synergistic coefficient could be obtained, which we propose for characterizing the synergistic effect of sedimentary compaction and clay mineral-cementation. The simplified physical model and the results simulated by the LB method are verified with the experimental results under indoor experimental conditions, and the two are consistent. Finally, we have carried out a simulation of gas flooding water under conditions of high temperature and high pressure which are consistent with the actual tight sandstone gas reservoir. The simulation results show that both gas and water have relatively stronger seepage ability compared with the results of laboratory experiments. Moreover, the interfacial tension between gas and water is lower, and the swept volume is larger during placement. In addition, the binding ability of the rock surface to the water film adhered to it becomes reduced. The method proposed in this study could indicate high frequency change of pores and throats and used to reflect the seepage resistance caused by frequent collisions with the wall in microscopic numerical simulations of tight sandstone gas reservoirs.

The swelling effect of high-pressure carbon dioxide (CO 2) in coal seam is obvious. In the restrained deep formation, it is converted to stress acting on the wellbore and the caprock. The action stress is concentrated near the wellbore and poses a threat to the cement-formation interface. Due to interface failure to micro-annulus, wellbore integrity will be lost and this will have an impact on carbon dioxide-enhanced coalbed methane recovery (CO 2-ECBM) and storage. In this paper, the pseudo-steady pressure distribution and steady pressure distribution of CO 2 injection process were established after considering the change in permeability of coal seam injected with high-pressure supercritical CO 2 , and the vertical stress distribution model was derived. A one-dimensional radial numerical simulation formed by iterative method was established. A model for calculating the failure length at the cement-formation interface is obtained, and the shear stress and debonding length at the interface at various injection rates and times are calculated. The results show that the shear stress on the cement-formation interface has the maximum magnitude on the height of the interface between coal seam and caprock. The shear stress generated by coal swelling may break the fragile cement-formation interface into a narrow debonding interface. The injection rate has an influence on the interface failure length. For the same total injection amount, low injection rate is beneficial to protect the cement-formation interface integrity. This study provides a reference for the design of maximum injection speed for CO 2-ECBM and storage to avoid leakage.

The average pore pressure during oil formation is an important parameter for measuring the energy required for the oil formation and the capacity of injection–production wells. In past studies, the average pore pressure has been derived mainly from pressure build-up test results. However, such tests are expensive and time-consuming. The surface displacement of an oilfield is the result of change in the formation pore pressure, but no method is available for calculating the formation pore pressure based on the surface displacement. Therefore, in this study, the vertical displacement of the Earth’s surface was used to calculate changes in reservoir pore pressure. We employed marker-stakes to measure ground displacement. We used an improved image-to-image convolutional neural network (CNN) that does not include pooling layers or full-connection layers and uses a new loss function. We used the forward evolution method to produce training samples with labels. The CNN completed self-training using these samples. Then, machine learning was used to invert the surface vertical displacement to change the pore pressure in the oil reservoir. The method was tested in a block of the Sazhong X development zone in the Daqing Oilfield in China. The results showed that the variation in the formation pore pressure was 83.12%, in accordance with the results of 20 groups of pressure build-up tests within the range of the marker-stake measurements. Thus, the proposed method is less expensive, and faster than existing methods.