Petroleum Engineering Seminar

Alkaline flooding has been purported as a promising process for enhancing heavy oil recovery while alkaline-polymer (AP) and alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) injection have become commercial chemical flooding strategies for lighter oils. In the first part of this work, UTCHEM and CMG-STARS, two well-known reservoir simulators for chemical flooding simulations, have been compared for core scale and field scale cases. These simulators operate using different models for chemical flooding. Accurate forecast of performance production in Alkaline-Polymer-Surfactant (ASP) type flooding is paramount to progress in chemical enhanced-oil recovery (EOR). Although both simulators are claimed to properly account for the main recovery mechanisms in ASP flooding, to the best of our knowledge a systematic comparison has not been published. On the other hand, injection of alkaline solutions leads to mineral dissolution and precipitation in reservoirs that can change the permeability and porosity of porous media. The water-rock interaction events can alter the engineered solution pH, in turn. Accurate prediction pH changes and alkali consumption associated with mineral dissolution and precipitation is required in order to determine suitable chemical flooding designs. For this part, the computer simulations were performed with the 1-D dynamic reaction-transport portion of state-of-the-art geochemical software (the Geochemist’s Workbench). The strategy has been tested for conditions of Wyoming’s Minnelusa sandstone reservoirs.

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