Review of and Outlook for Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques in Kuwait Oil Reservoirs

Alkafeef, Saad F.; Zaid, Alforgi M.

doi:10.2523/11234-ms

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…The acid injected at the anode will advance through the core towards the cathode which is governed by different transport mechanisms including ion migration due to electrical gradients, pore fluid advection due to the prevailing electroosmotic flow, and diffusion due to concentration gradients. This theory requires further investigation by means of tracking the zeta potential across the surface of carbonate rocks with varying mineralogical content and pH as zeta potential is directly related to the stability of a colloidal suspension as a high Zeta potential value gives a stable colloidal system and gives greater repulsion forces [AlKafeef et al, 2007]. The reservoir rock is mostly dominated by H ϩ ions creating an overall acidic front mainly due to the following reasons [Acar et al 1990].…”

Section: Phenomenon and Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Approach to Analyze the Compatibility and Performance of Electrokinetic Low-Concentration Acid IOR in Heterogeneous Abu Dhabi Carbonate Reservoirs

Ansari

Haroun

Rahman

et al. 2016

SPE Improved Oil Recovery Conference

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The increasing global demand for additional energy requirement forecasted upto 74% in 2030 has made Improved Oil recovery (IOR) at the forefront of oil and gas R&D for the past 4 decades as it helps in the improvement of the hydrocarbon sweep efficiency. In carbonate reservoirs, there is a challenge of having large fractions of unswept oil, mainly due to permeability damage, heterogeneous formation or unfavourable petrophysical properties. Conventional acidizing, though useful in increasing the effective permeability in the near well-bore region, has issues of limited depth of penetration, as acid is consumed and adsorbed early into the formation. However, the application of Electrokinetic Low-concentration acid IOR (EK LCA-IOR), where conventional low-concentration acidizing (LCA-IOR) is coupled with electrokinetic enhanced oil recovery (EK-EOR) , has resulted in targeting the previously immobile oil, significantly improving the capillary number while minimizing acid consumption and adsorption.This study demonstrates an integrated approach using Single Energy Computed-tomography (SECT) scan imaging and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) to analyze the compatibility and effectiveness of EK LCA-IOR in carbonate reservoirs through an increase in depth of penetration. Core-flood experiments at Abu Dhabi reservoir conditions conducted on 1-foot core-plug, involved waterflooding followed by LCA-IOR, assisted by electrokinetics in both sequential and simultaneous fashion, identifying optimum conditions (1.2% HCl concentration, 1V/cm voltage gradient).The use of SECT images of core-plug before and after the experiments, confirmed wormhole orientation and propagation length across heterogeneous core-plugs. NMR was used to identify and confirm various reservoir rock types (RRTs)that were tested allowing us to expand the range of optimum current densities and acid concentration for the EK LCA-IOR process to meet the objectives of this study in maximizing displacement efficiency and permeability enhancement.Findings confirm EK LCA-IOR application resulted in additional 15-35% displacement efficiency beyond the waterflooding limit (60%). In addition, the maximum permeability enhancement of 53% was recorded and made possible using the simultaneous approach. SECT imaging confirmed that the maxi-mum penetration depth of the injected acid was achieved using the simultaneous approach as the enhancement of depth of penetration was 82% and 70% in simultaneous and sequential approach, respectively. Furthermore, NMR results indicate that EK LCA-IOR is promising across heterogeneous formations, which allows us to optimize the process for each unique formation, using the identified operating parameters increasing displacement efficiency by 35% and permeability enhancement by 28%.EK LCA-IOR may be developed as an environomic technology targeting the reduction of power consumption and acid/water requirement upto 70% as compared to conventional IOR processes. This study takes advantage of integrating imaging capability of SECT & NMR in orde...

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Section: Phenomenon and Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Approach to Analyze the Compatibility and Performance of Electrokinetic Low-Concentration Acid IOR in Heterogeneous Abu Dhabi Carbonate Reservoirs

Ansari

Haroun

Rahman

et al. 2016

SPE Improved Oil Recovery Conference

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“…Polymer flood is the most widely used chemical EOR method to recover light oil. Based on past experiences, polymer flood is recommended for oil viscosity less than 100 cP under reservoir temperature, and sandstone reservoir with oil saturation higher than 30%, reservoir permeability greater than 20 mD, net thickness more than 3 m (10 ft), and reservoir temperature less than 90°C (200°F) (Lake et al 1992;Alkafeef and Zaid 2007;Gao and Towler 2011). Such a change can lead to better sweep efficiency.…”

Section: Figure 1: Heavy Oil Resources By Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances of Polymer Flood in Heavy Oil Recovery

Chang

2011

All Days

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The heavy oil resources worldwide are estimated at 3396 billion barrels. With depletion of light oil, we have to face the technical and economical challenges of developing heavy oil fields. The recovery of heavy oil reservoirs is often less than 20%, or even below 10%. Even though thermal methods have been successfully applied to many heavy oil fields, thin pay zones are not suitable for thermal recovery. Based on past experiences, polymer flood is not recommended for oil viscosity over 100 centipoises. In recent years, polymer flood becomes a promising technology for heavy oil recovery thanks to the widespread use of horizontal wells. This paper highlights the research advances in polymer enhanced heavy oil recovery since 1977. Based on laboratory tests, polymer can achieve tertiary recovery of more than 20% for heavy oil. A few field cases in China, Canada, Turkey, Suriname and Oman are reviewed and analysed. Some field pilots have shown positive results.

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“… 14 , 15 On the other hand, steam flooding is also one of the EOR techniques that can be applied to various reservoir and fluid conditions with improved operational techniques. There is an increasing number of steam flooding projects in carbonate reservoirs, 16 − 19 light oil reservoirs, 20 , 21 thin heavy oil reservoirs, 22 − 24 and offshore developments. 25 − 27 Before the implementation of steam flooding at a full field scale, a series of detailed preliminary studies, including laboratory tests, reservoir characterization, simulation, and pilot tests, are preformed to reduce the uncertainties and to minimize the risks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pattern Recognition for Steam Flooding Field Applications Based on Hierarchical Clustering and Principal Component Analysis

et al. 2022

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Steam flooding is a complex process that has been considered as an effective enhanced oil recovery technique in both heavy oil and light oil reservoirs. Many studies have been conducted on different sets of steam flooding projects using the conventional data analysis methods, while the implementation of machine learning algorithms to find the hidden patterns is rarely found. In this study, a hierarchical clustering algorithm (HCA) coupled with principal component analysis is used to analyze the steam flooding projects worldwide. The goal of this research is to group similar steam flooding projects into the same cluster so that valuable operational design experiences and production performance from the analogue cases can be referenced for decision-making. Besides, hidden patterns embedded in steam flooding applications can be revealed based on data characteristics of each cluster for different reservoir/fluid conditions. In this research, principal component analysis is applied to project original data to a new feature space, which finds two principal components to represent the eight reservoir/fluid parameters (8D) but still retain about 90% of the variance. HCA is implemented with the optimized design of five clusters, Euclidean distance, and Ward’s linkage method. The results of the hierarchical clustering depict that each cluster detects a unique range of each property, and the analogue cases present that fields under similar reservoir/fluid conditions could share similar operational design and production performance.

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Review of and Outlook for Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques in Kuwait Oil Reservoirs

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Integrated Approach to Analyze the Compatibility and Performance of Electrokinetic Low-Concentration Acid IOR in Heterogeneous Abu Dhabi Carbonate Reservoirs

Integrated Approach to Analyze the Compatibility and Performance of Electrokinetic Low-Concentration Acid IOR in Heterogeneous Abu Dhabi Carbonate Reservoirs

Advances of Polymer Flood in Heavy Oil Recovery

Pattern Recognition for Steam Flooding Field Applications Based on Hierarchical Clustering and Principal Component Analysis

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