Huff ‘n’ Puff EOR Proves Effective in Gas-Condensate Reservoirs
Authors: Carpenter Chris 
Published: November 2019

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper URTEC-2019-987-MS, “Gas-Injection EOR in Eagle Ford Shale Gas-Condensate Reservoirs,” by Reza Ganjdanesh, SPE, Wei Yu, and Mauricio Xavier Fiallos, SPE, The University of Texas at Austin; Erich Kerr, SPE, EP Energy; Kamy Sepehrnoori, SPE, The University of Texas at Austin; and Raymond Ambrose, SPE, EP Energy, prepared for the 2019 Unconventional Resources Technology Conference, Denver, 22–24 July. The paper has not been peer•reviewed. Copyright 2019 Unconventional Resources Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission.

As the pressure drops below the dewpoint in an unconventional gas-condensate reservoir, the liquid drops out of the gas phase and forms an oil phase in the matrix and fracture. The volume of the oil phase formed in the matrix mostly stays below the residual oil saturation. The gas huff ‘n’ puff process has demonstrated potential in improving recovery from tight oil reservoirs. The objective of the study described in this paper was to investigate the feasibility of huff ‘n’ puff enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in a•gas-condensate reservoir.

Introduction

Compositional analyses of fluid samples, taken from early production of three wells located a few miles apart from each other in Eagle Ford, were used to build the black-oil, volatile-oil, and gas-condensate fluid models. The produced field gas was selected as the only viable option for injection.

Phase-Behavior Models

The phase-behavior models were built for black-oil, volatile-oil, and gas-condensate wells on the basis of pressure/volume/temperature reports from bottomhole samples. The reservoir fluids were built by combining mathematically the oil and gas fluids from separators. The pseudocomponents were characterized from the detailed compositional laboratory analysis. The Peng-Robinson equation of state with the temperature-independent volume correction was used for phase-behavior modeling. The Lohrenz-Bray-Clark viscosity model was applied in calculating the phase viscosities. The condensate/gas ratio for the gas condensate fluid is 147 STB/MMscf, which is a rich gas-condensate fluid.

Comparative Study of Gas Injection

To compare the performance of huff ‘n’ puff gas injection in different fluid types, single-well simulation models were built for each fluid type. Several well models of 4,500 ft in length with a fracture spacing of 50 ft were built using a compositional simulator. The reservoir thickness was 130 ft. The hydraulic fractures were set up using the embedded discrete fracture model (EDFM) preprocessor. Each single-well model was history matched using the production data. Because the history-matching solutions were nonunique, the rate and pressure transient analysis for each well were used to limit the results to the realistic solution spaces. The history-matched fracture half-length varied between 50 and 175 ft and the fracture height varied between 50 and 90 ft. The fracture conductivity ranged between 3–30 md-ft.

The history-matched models were used to investigate the performance of gas-injection EOR for all fluid types. The field gas was injected for 10 cycles, and the cumulative produced oil using huff ‘n’ puff was compared to one without gas injection. The incremental oil recovery for the nine studied black-oil cases varied between 30 and 40%. The incremental oil recovery was less than 10% for three volatile-cases and 15 to 20% for 13 gas-condensate ones.