No abstract

Mitigating production decline is a challenging task that every oil company will be faced with at some point over the life of an oil reservoir. However, depending on the existing reservoir fluid and rock characteristics, saturation distribution, and the level of heterogeneity of the reservoir rock, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) programs can be implemented to alleviate the decline in oil rate and improve overall recovery. This paper presents an example of a how a mature waterflooded field in southwestern Saskatchewan, Canada could be revitalized using Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer (ASP) flooding. In this study, laboratory tests were undertaken to select effective chemicals and optimize concentrations that would yield the highest potential oil recovery. Subsequent radial coreflood experiments demonstrated a wide range of potential recovery that depended on slug size and chemical concentration. A detailed numerical simulation of the optimum core displacement was performed in order to calibrate the interaction of the EOR agent with the reservoir rock and fluids, and ultimately upscaled to the full field numerical model Reservoir simulation sensitivity runs were conducted in order to identify an optimum field development strategy using the selected ASP fluid. The results from this optimized development strategy were compared to the waterflood base case to demonstrate the potential upside of the chemical flood. This paper also presents a holistic roadmap for developing EOR projects from initial concept to field implementation and beyond.