ASP Flooding: Theory and Practice Progress in China

Abstract

In low oil price era, it seems that ASP flooding has little market. However, ASP progress in China shows that ASP flooding is good technology to help oil companies thrive and make profit. Since 2014, ASP flooding has entered industrial application in Daqing oilfield. ASP flooding production in 2015 is 3.5 million ton, 9% of the oilfield’s total production of Daqing oilfield. There are 22 ASP flooding blocks in Daqing, containing 7231 wells and 3 are new blocks in 2016. Obviously, more and more ASP flooding is being carried out. Another large ASP flooding field test in high temperature (80°C) in Henan oilfield has got staged incremental oil recovery of 7.7%. Latest theory and application in ASP flooding in China are reviewed to help ASP flooding go from success to more application. Weak alkali is better than strong alkali ASP flooding. Relation between viscosity and IFT is discussed. This paper also explains why weak alkali ASP flooding is promoted in Daqing after 12 field tests on strong alkali one. ASP flooding can be a great help to survive low oil price.

Production of Biodegradable Sulfonated Methyl Ester by a Falling Film Reactor for ASP Flooding in EOR

“…The value of the interfacial tension between surfactant:co-surfactant:formation water is 0.01 mN/m [19]. Recently Mudjalipah, et al [12] have reported that sulfonation of MES using a falling film reactor produced an interfacial tension value of 2.99 mN/m. Each MES product was tested by a phase diagram test on two types of oil (e.g.…”

“…The contact time of SO3 and organic matter should be kept relatively short to prevent undesirable color changes from sulfonation side-products [12]. As stated above, the sulfonation reaction is very exothermic, which can increase the viscosity of the mixture during the reaction.…”

“…The contribution of this study is the production of a high yield of biosurfactant from vegetable oil using a wetted wall column reactor and finding the proper formulation of CNO and PKO-based biosurfactant and polymer for the ASP mixture in a EOR core flooding test in view of optimizing the OOIP percentage [1,[11][12][13].…”

An overview of chemical enhanced oil recovery: recent advances and prospects

“…For example, in the year 2015, when oil price crashed to ~ $40/ bbl, most oil fields applying chemical EOR were shut down to prevent losses. In Daqing oil field, to ensure continued ASP flooding process is economical in some of its fields, weak alkali was substituted for strong alkali to lower the cost of the chemical EOR process [153].…”

Hydrophobically associating polymers for enhanced oil recovery – Part B: A review of modelling approach to flow in porous media

“…The use of HAPAM polymers for Alkaline Surfactant Polymer (ASP) flooding is not common compared to the use of HPAM polymers (Feng et al, 2013;Guo et al, 2017). aged for a period of 120 days, the viscosity of the associative polymer is improved however, the interfacial tension remained the same.…”