Comprehensive Experimental Study of Steam Flooding for Offshore Heavy Oil Recovery After Water Flooding

Wei Zhang, Yigang Liu, Jian Zou, Qiuxia Wang, Zhiyuan Wang, Yongbin Zhao and Xiaofei Sun ()
Additional contact information
Wei Zhang: CNOOC Key Laboratory of Offshore Heavy Oil Thermal Recovery, Tianjin 300459, China
Yigang Liu: CNOOC Key Laboratory of Offshore Heavy Oil Thermal Recovery, Tianjin 300459, China
Jian Zou: CNOOC Key Laboratory of Offshore Heavy Oil Thermal Recovery, Tianjin 300459, China
Qiuxia Wang: CNOOC Key Laboratory of Offshore Heavy Oil Thermal Recovery, Tianjin 300459, China
Zhiyuan Wang: CNOOC Key Laboratory of Offshore Heavy Oil Thermal Recovery, Tianjin 300459, China
Yongbin Zhao: School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266580, China
Xiaofei Sun: School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266580, China

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: The objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of steam flooding (SF) as an alternative method for offshore heavy oil reservoirs after water flooding (WF). A series of experiments was performed by using specially designed one-dimensional (1-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) experimental systems to prove the feasibility of SF and to study the effects of the timing of SF, the steam injection rate, and the addition of chemical agents (the nitrogen foams and displacing agents) on the performance of SF after WF. The results showed that, for offshore heavy oil reservoirs after WF processes, the SF process is a viable enhanced oil recovery method, which should start as early as possible if the economic conditions permit. It is extremely important to choose an appropriate steam injection rate for SF after the WF process. Compared with the pure SF process, the final oil recovery of the SF process with the addition of the nitrogen foam or the displacing agent increased by 12.83% and 7.58% in the 1-D experiments, respectively. The nitrogen foam and displacing agent have synergistic effects on the performance of the SF after WF processes. The final oil recovery of the SF process with the addition of the two chemical agents at the steam injection rate of 10 mL/min was 37.64%, which was 5.47% higher than that of the pure SF process in the 3-D experiments.

Keywords: offshore heavy oil; water flooding; steam flooding; nitrogen foam; displacing agent; oil recovery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/12/3140/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/12/3140/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:12:p:3140-:d:1679343

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().