bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Optimization of Production and CO2 Utilization Via Parametric Representation and Evaluation of WAG Schedules
Authors: Klenner Robert , Gao Panqing , Taghizadeh Okhtay , Iyer Naresh , Azzaro Steven , Murrell Glen 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
Given limited CO2 supply, operational constraints, and pattern specific reservoir performance, WAG schedule can be customized such that NPV or other metrics are optimized. Depending on the WAG schedule, recovery can fluctuate between 5–15% at the pattern scale due to reservoir heterogeneity causing variations in sweep efficiency. An analytical method was developed to optimize WAG schedules that couples traditional reservoir modeling and simulation with machine learning, enabling the discovery of optimal WAG schedules that increase recovery at the pattern level. A history-matched reservoir model of Chaparral Energy's Farnsworth Field, Ochiltree County, TX was sampled intelligently to perform predictive reservoir flow simulations and artificially build an intelligent reservoir model that samples a broad range of possible WAG scenarios for optimization. The intelligent model generates the next "best" sample to investigate in the numerical simulator and converges on the optima, quickly reducing the number of runs investigated. Results in this paper demonstrate that there can be significant improvements in net present value as well as net utilization rates of CO2 using this analytical technique. The WAG design generated by the intelligent reservoir model should be deployed in the field in early 2016 for validation. It is intended that the intelligent reservoir model will be updated on a regular basis as injection and production data is obtained. This effort represents the beginning of a paradigm shift in the application of modeling and simulation tools for significant improvements in field production operations.
Design of an ASP Pilot for Caracara Sur Oilfield: Selection of Chemicals and Laboratory Assessment
Authors: Prieto C. A. , Rodriguez R. , Romero P. , Blin N. , Panadero A. , Escudero M. J. , Barrio I. , Alvarez E. , Montes J. , Angulo R. , Cubillos H. 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
The design of an alkali-surfactant-polymer (ASP) formulation for chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery poses multiple challenges from the experimental point of view. The present research examines the laboratory procedures and experimental results aimed at selecting the most suitable chemicals for an ASP pilot trial at the Caracara Sur field (Los Llanos Basin, Colombia). The key challenge was the limited compatibility of the surfactant and polymer selected under reservoir conditions (temperature and total salinity), leading to phase separation of the ASP solution and losses of the activity of both chemicals. An extension of the experimental program was required to re-design the formulation and mitigate risks of damaging the formation in the following field trials. The formulation comprised an alkyl benzene sulfonate as main ingredient, a hydrolyzed polyacrylamide as viscosifying agent and some weak alkali to reach the optimum salinity of the mixture. A mono-alkyl diphenyl disulfonate ether was added as coupling agent to improve compatibility of the ASP mixture. The performance of the selected ASP formulation was assessed by means of interfacial tension measurements, long-term thermal stability tests and dynamic core-flooding tests. The formulation provided ultra-low interfacial tension (&lt; 10-2 mN/m) and viscosity enough to assure an appropriate mobility control. Hence, the formulation was considered to be suitable for further testing in the field pilot.
Foams with Wettability Alteration for Oil-Wet Carbonate Rocks
Authors: Ghosh Pinaki , Mohanty Kishore K. 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
Carbonate rocks are typically heterogeneous at many scales; hence foams have the potential to improve both oil displacement efficiency and sweep efficiency in carbonate rocks. However, foams have to overcome two adverse conditions in carbonates: oil-wettability and low permeability. This study evaluates several foam formulations that combine wettability alteration and foaming in low permeability oil-wet carbonate cores. Contact angle experiments were performed on oil-wet calcite plates to evaluate the wettability altering capabilities of the surfactant formulations. Static foam stability tests were conducted to evaluate their foaming performance in bulk. Finally, oil displacement experiments were performed using Texas Cream and Estaillades Limestone cores with crude oil. Two different injection strategies were studied in this work: alternating gas-surfactant-gas injection and co-injection of wettability alteration surfactant with gas at a constant foam quality. Cationic surfactants DTAB and BTC altered the wettability of the oil-wet calcite plate to water-wet, but were ineffective in forming foam. The addition of a non-ionic surfactant Tergitol NP helped in the foaming ability of these formulations. In-house developed Gemini cationic surfactant GC 580 was able to alter the wettability from oil-wet to water-wet and also formed strong bulk foam. Static foam tests showed increase in bulk foam stability with the addition of zwitterionic surfactants to GC 580. Oil displacement experiments in oil-wet carbonate cores revealed that tertiary oil-recovery with injection of a wettability-altering surfactant can recover a significant amount of oil (about 20–25% OOIP) over the secondary water flood and gas flood. The foam rheology in the presence of oil suggested propagation of only weak foam in oil-wet low permeability carbonate cores.
Identifying and Evaluating Surfactant Additives to Reduce Water Blocks after Hydraulic Fracturing for Low Permeability Reservoirs
Authors: Liang Tianbo , Achour Sofiane H. , Longoria Rafael A. , DiCarlo David A. , Nguyen Quoc P. 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
Significant amount of fracturing fluid is lost after hydraulic fracturing, and it is believed that the loss of fluid into the matrix can hinder the hydrocarbon production. One way to reduce this damage is to use the surfactants. Robust surfactant formulations have been developed for chemical enhanced oil recovery (CEOR); similar ideas are introduced in this study to reduce water blocks in low permeability reservoirs. Here we present an experimental investigation based on a coreflood sequence that simulates fluid invasion, flowback, and hydrocarbon production within the rock near the fracture face. Different levels of IFT reductions are tested and compared in order to explore the best condition that maximizes the permeability enhancement. The effect of in-situ microemulsion generation to mobilize the trapped water is also studied. From this work, we recognize the mechanism responsible for the permeability damage in matrix and we suggest criteria to optimize the performance of surfactant additives so as to enhance the hydrocarbon production from low permeability gas/oil reservoirs after hydraulic fracturing.
Immiscible Water Alternating Gas (IWAG) EOR: Current State of the Art
Authors: Holtz Mark H 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is a general application used in mature oil fields to generate additional reserve growth. Several types of EOR applications are implemented in the oil industry. One such application is the injection of gas into a reservoir as a gas displacement recovery (GDR) mechanism to induce additional reserve growth. A specific type of GDR application is the immiscible water-alternating-gas (IWAG) displacement process. In this application a slug of water is put into an injection well, followed by gas, which exists as a separate phase from the water and oil. Water and gas injection slugs are alternated until the designed amount of gas has been injected, or as field production dictates. Continuous water (case water) is typically injected after the IWAG process.
Herein, the state-of-art of IWAG EOR is described from an extensive literature review. First, the theories of the recovery mechanisms that cause IWAG to produce incremental oil are described. These mechanisms include viscosity reduction, 3-phase relative permeability, oil swelling, and oil film flow, all of which are a function of fluid and rock-fluid interactions. Next, salient laboratory studies are summarized, including micromodel and core floods. These studies test pore-level characteristics, displaying ranges of residual non-wetting phase saturations (hydrocarbons) down to 0.13 to 0.25 and incremental oil recovery ranging from 14% to 20% of OOIP. Some experiments isolate a specific recovery mechanism in order to determine its validity and contribution to recovery. Studies generally point to the conclusion that the gas type shows no discernable difference in recovery character.
The paper concludes with a synopsis of results from small-scale field trials and field-scale projects in both heavy and light oil. Both simulation modeling and field trials are summarized. Projects have been implemented with varying types of gases, WAG ratios, and gas slug sizes, resulting in incremental reserve growth being reported in the range of 2 to 9%. The fundamental immiscible recovery mechanisms in IWAG can produce lower cost and faster response EOR projects, with moderate recovery efficiency gains.
Survey and Data Analysis of the Pilot and Field Polymer Flooding Projects in China
Authors: Zhang Yandong , Wei Mingzhen , Bai Baojun , Yang Hongbin , Kang Wanli 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes are regarded as important methods to recover remaining oil after primary and secondary recovery. It is important to select the most appropriate EOR process among the possible techniques for a candidate reservoir. Therefore, EOR screening criteria have been constructed using available EOR data sets and serve as the first step to compare the suitability of each EOR method for a particular reservoir. Most screening criteria for polymer flooding are based on data sets from EOR surveys published biannually by the Oil & Gas Journal. These surveys missed significant polymer flooding parameters such as formation water salinity and hardness, polymer types and molecular weight, polymer concentration, reservoir heterogeneity, and so on. All of these topics are covered in this paper with data from relevant literature and records provided by oil companies in China.
Polymer flooding has been widely applied in China for over 20 years and a large number of pilot and field projects have been conducted. These projects include important information to quantify the development of polymer flooding as an EOR method. Nevertheless, most of them have been published in Chinese, and are not accessible to the global research community due to the language barrier. This paper represents an effort to collect all relevant information of polymer flooding from available Chinese publications and reports from all of the major oil companies in China. The primary objectives of this survey is to reveal EOR advances, to trace the development of the polymer flooding EOR methodology in China, and to benefit EOR worldwide.
This project collected information on 55 polymer flooding projects after reviewing nearly 200 publications in Chinese, including 31 pilot projects and 24 field projects from 1991 to 2014. A data set was constructed by collecting all relevant information for polymer flooding. Statistical analyses and graphical methods were used to analyze the whole data set. Box plots combined with violin plots were used to show the distribution and the range of each parameter. By defining and calculating lower and upper limits in box plots, special projects were identified and explained. Scatter plots, which show multiple parameters in one plot, were used to identify significant relationships among different parameters, especially for dependent parameters. This method overcomes some disadvantages of the range method, which is traditionally used for EOR screening. For example, using polymers with high concentration in low salinity reservoirs can lead to higher incremental oil recovery than in high salinity ones, and lower permeability usually correlates with the use of polymers with lower molecular weight. However, the traditional range method cannot show this relationship. Finally, comprehensive screening criteria for polymer flooding were updated based on information revealed in the field application projects.
Characterization of Wormhole Growth and Its Applications for CHOPS Wells Using History Matching
Authors: Fan Zhaoqi , Yang Daoyong 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
A wormhole dynamic growth model has been developed and incorporated with a commercial reservoir simulator, i.e., CMG, to characterize wormhole growth for cold heavy oil production with sand (CHOPS) processes and extends its application to a field well. More specifically, geomechanics analysis associated with a collapsed pore and its throat structure has been performed to quantify the sand production. Then, a sand failure criterion and a four-direction pressure difference analysis are respectively proposed to determine the sand production rate and the potential direction of wormhole generation and growth. By considering the uncertainties associated with the parameters involved in the wormhole growth model, history matching is respectively conducted to estimate the critical breakdown pressure, superficial area of the collapsed throats, and coefficients of the permeability-porosity correlation for a field CHOPS well. Subsequently, the dynamic wormhole growth model has been validated with a synthetic model and then extended to a CHOPS well for determining its wormhole network. It is found from both the synthetic case and field application that the newly proposed technique can be used to determine the corresponding wormhole network as a function of time by history matching the production profile. Furthermore, the history matched models can also be utilized to optimize the following enhanced oil recovery processes such as cyclic solvent injection.
A Novel Fast-Track Methodology to Evaluate CO2 Foamers Performances
Authors: Chabert M. , Cuenca A. , Lacombe E. , Chevallier E. , Nabzar L. , Batot G. 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
Use of foams to control CO2 floods conformance is attracting a renewed interest in recent years due its flexibility and ease of application. This application becomes even more attractive in current times of low oil price, as it can be an inexpensive mean to maximize CO2 utilization efficiency and increase production at no capital expenses. However, it is generally recognized that to maximize chances of success of a pilot application, an appropriate foaming formulation must be designed for a given reservoir and characterized in petrophysics lab. This usually requires an extensive laboratory work that is not always compatible with cost constraints.
We present a new cost-effective workflow that focuses on evaluating two formulation performance indicators derived from the population balance model: foam creation (related to foaming power) and resistance to foam destruction (related to foam stabilization against coarsening and coalescence).
We assess these two parameters in representative reservoir conditions by measuring foam mobility reduction in porous media and foam lifetimes. Experimental results and simple scaling arguments show that these two measurements, both of importance to the application, are mostly independent. This shed light on a recurring question pertaining to the relevance of bulk foam experiments to predict foam efficiency in porous media. With this in mind, we present a new approach for measuring mobility reduction in porous media with a higher throughput than usual corefloods experiments. This methodology is based on sandpack experiments as well as serial coreflood experiments that allow multiple successive formulations testing. We show that the link between sandpack and coreflood results is far from being straightforward, and depends on static (geometrical) as well as dynamic (flow) parameters.
Overall, this work provides new insights on the major performance indicators used to evaluate foam efficiency for gas conformance control in oil reservoirs. We build on this understanding to present a novel approach that can help developing more efficient foam EOR solutions. In particular, it allows tailoring foaming agents properties (such as foaminess and foam stabilization) to specific conditions of a given application (oil saturation, vertical heterogeneity, etc…).
Characterizing Tracer Applicability in Different Mineralogy
Authors: Spilker K. K. , Dwarakanath V. , Malik Taimur , Burdett Tao Emily , Mirkovic Zoran 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
Fluorinated benzoic acids (FBA) have been widely used in the oil industry as conservative tracers. However, some of these tracers have been shown to rapidly degrade when tested at temperatures above 121°C within three weeks. Naphthalene sulfonates (NSAs) have been shown to be excellent tracers in geothermal applications. However, a broader study was required to determine tracer conservation in reservoir fluids and formations typically encountered in the oil field.
In this study we compare the oil field industry standard FBA tracers to NSA tracers under dynamic test conditions in the presence of reservoir oil, sandstone, carbonates and clays. We also compare the two sets of tracers under static conditions in the presence of four crude oils and different clay mineralogy to establish tracer conservation. Seven different sodium salts of naphthalene sulfonic acids were tested to determine if the tracers were adsorbed onto natural porous media (reservoir rock) at reservoir conditions. A broad range of conditions were selected to target typical reservoirs encountered. In addition, reservoir rock and a pseudo formation containing 10 Wt.% clay in silica sand were used in sand packs saturated with surrogate brine to ensure the tracer recovery under dynamic conditions.
High pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC-FLD) separation was used for simultaneous detection of seven NSAs while FBAs were analyzed using HPLC-UV. GC analysis of isopropyl alcohol (IPA) was used as a standard against which the others were measured.
Dynamic tracer tests demonstrated that the sodium salts of naphthalene sulfonates behaved similarly to the control, IPA, with none of the tracers adsorbing on to the rock surface or partitioning into the oil phase. The naphthalene sulfonates can be successfully used as conservative tracers most specifically for high temperature applications. NSA tracers are an attractive replacement for conservative FBA tracers in the oil field due to their superior thermal stability, solubility in oil field brine, lower detection limits and cost.
Proper Simulation of Chemical EOR (CEOR) Pilots - A Real Case Study
Authors: Najafabadi Nariman Fathi , Chawathe Adwait 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
Pilots are widely used for the purpose of gathering valuable information about performance and practical challenges of implementing a particular CEOR process in a given field (Adibhatla and Wattenbarger, 2009; Cheng et al., 2012). A critical step in proper design and optimization of any CEOR process, in full field or pilot scale, is appropriate and precise numerical simulations. Many considerations need to be taken into account for such simulations.
Addition of chemical species to the material balance equations alongside finer resolution requirements for CEOR simulations compared to waterfloods (WF), often make it impractical to run full field CEOR simulations to the required accuracy. Massively parallel computing, dynamic local grid refinement and sector modeling have been used with varying success, of which sector modeling is the most common. Sector models, by their very definition, are also naturally suited for modeling of pilots.
The art of sector modeling needs mastering a few important steps such as: appropriate selection of the sector model extent, details on carving it out of the Full Field Model (FFM), populating it with proper petrophysical and fluid properties, initializing it to correct initial conditions and optimizing its boundary conditions. On top of that, choice of optimum grid size for proper trade-off of simulation run times and accuracy needs to be considered.
This paper presents a case study for appropriate simulation of a CEOR pilot within Chevron. The candidate has a waterflood history matched FFM. This model is used to generate a sector model for the CEOR pilot area. This paper outlines how the extent of the sector model and all the regions in communication with the Area of Interest (AOI) is decided. It also discusses proper initialization and optimization of the boundary conditions of the sector model along with its appropriate refinement and grid optimization. Proper CEOR simulations on the final optimized sector model and sensitivity analysis are also presented. The challenges, lessons learned and best practices are shared and important considerations for adequate simulation of CEOR processes are outlined.
Surfactant Huff-n-Puff Application Potentials for Unconventional Reservoirs
Authors: Shuler Patrick J. , Lu Zayne , Ma Qisheng , Tang Yongchun 
Published: March 2016

Abstract
Improved Oil Reocvery (IOR) technologies may offer a new strategy to improve the initial production (IP) and slow the production decline from oil-rich shale formations. Early implementation of chemical IOR technologies largely have been overlooked during strategic planning of unconventional reservoirs. The purpose of this study is to improve understanding of the dynamic processes of oil displacement by surfactants and to investigate mechanism of how surfactants extract oil. A successful conventional surfactant "huff-n-puff' treatment is described with a focus on any relationship between increased oil production and the surfactant soaking period. Surfactant chemistry has been considered as one of a few ultimate IOR solutions. Despite being well proven as effective chemicals to recover oil from convenetional reservoris, surfactants commonly are used in hydraulic fracturing of unconventional reservoris are just to promote flow back of the injected aqueous fluid over a relatively short time frame. In order to better understand the functionality of surfactants for obtaining favorable oil interaction with both the stimulation fluid and rock matrix, a specifically-designed "oil-on-a-plate" (OOAP) setup and procedure is employed to examine the penetration of surfactant into the oil-film that is adhereing to a solid surface. In addition to the well-recognized spontaneous imbibition and surface wettability alternation processes, surfactant also can gradually penetrate and mobilize oil droplets, resulting in improved oil recovert. If properly selected and designed, the surfactant additives in stimulation/fracturing fluids could have multi-functions towards improving both IP and the longer-term oil production. Besides serving as a demulsifier and flowback enhancer to boost IP, the surfactants could continuously lift-up and mobilize adsorbed oil to increase recoverable oil in place.