Enhancing Oil Recovery from Chalk Reservoirs by a Low-Salinity Water Flooding Mechanism and Fluid/Rock Interactions

Aly A. Hamouda and Sachin Gupta
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Aly A. Hamouda: Department of Petroleum Engineering, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, Norway
Sachin Gupta: Department of Petroleum Engineering, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, Norway

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: Different Low Salinity Waters (LSWs) are investigated in this work to understand the role of some ions, which were recognized from our previous work and the literature for their effect on wettability alteration. Different flooding stages were followed. The primary stage was by injecting synthetic seawater (SSW) and the secondary stage was with SSW diluted by 10 (LSW 1:10) and 50 (LSW 1:50) times, single and two salt brines, such as Na 2 SO 4 , MgCl 2 , and NaCl+MgCl 2 at 70 °C. The flooding sequence was due to that most of the fields in the North Sea were flooded with seawater. Two flooding rates were followed, 4 PV/day (PV = Pore Volume) and 16 PV/day in all the experiments. One of the observations was the increase of the pH during the flooding with LSW and single salt brines. The increase of the pH was attributed to mineral precipitation/dissolution as the results of ionic interactions. The effluent ion concentrations measured to understand the most likely oil recovery mechanisms. The results showed that the higher the SSW dilution the slower the oil recovery response. In presence of SO 4 2? , Ca/Mg, higher oil recovery. The exchange between Ca/Mg, was in line with field observations. A geochemical simulation was done for a comparison with the experimental data.

Keywords: low salinity flooding; oil recovery; chalk; calcium; magnesium; sulfate (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: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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