Impact of Injection Gas on Low-Tension Foam Process for EOR in Low-Permeability Oil-Wet Carbonates

Dany Hachem and Quoc P. Nguyen ()
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Dany Hachem: Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
Quoc P. Nguyen: Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 24, 1-21

Abstract: Low-tension gas (LTG) flooding has been proven in lab-scale experiments to be a viable tertiary enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique in low-permeability (~10 mD) oil-wet carbonates. Work carried out previously almost exclusively focused on water-wet cores. The application of LTG in oil-wet carbonates is investigated in this study along with the impact of a hydrocarbon (HC) mixture as the injection gas on oil–water microemulsion phase behavior. The optimum injection gas fraction (ratio of gas injection rate to total injection rate of gas and water) for the hydrocarbon gas mixture in oil-wet carbonates regarding the oil recovery rate was determined to be 60% as it resulted in around 50% residual oil in place (ROIP) recovery. It was shown that proper mobility control can be achieved under these conditions even in the absence of strong foam. The effect of HC gas dissolution in oil was clearly shown by replacing the injection HC gas with nitrogen under the same conditions. Furthermore, the importance of ultra-low interfacial tension (IFT) produced by the injection gas and surfactant slug is proven by comparing injection at sub-optimum salinity to injection at optimum salinity.

Keywords: low-tension gas; low-permeability carbonate; oil wetness; microemulsion; enhanced oil recovery; foam mobility control (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: 2023
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