Screening and Ranking Alberta Oil Pools for CO2 Flooding and Sequestration

摘要

The recent high oil price and interest in reducingrnGHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions in response to globalrnwarming may have created new business opportunities tornrealize incremental value from depleted oil pools throughrnCO2 flooding. Not all oil pools in Alberta are suitable forrnCO2 flood. Thus, screening methodology needs to berndeveloped and applied in order to rank the candidaternpools for CO2 flooding and sequestration.rnBecause of the large number of oil pools in Albertarn(8,800), a computer-based ranking program using ExcelrnVBA (Visual Basic for Applications) has been developed.rnThe program is capable of retrieving pertinentrninformation from the digitized Alberta reserve database,rnand performs parametric optimization calculations tornprovide technical rankings. Six parameters with differentrnassigned weightings were used in the technical ranking.rnThese include API gravity of oil, residual oil saturation,rnratio between reservoir pressure and predicted minimumrnmiscibility pressure (P/MMP), reservoir temperature, netrnpay thickness, and porosity.rnAfter compilation of the Alberta reserve database, allrnAlberta oil pools were ranked for CO2 flooding potential.rnThe results show that most of the deep carbonate oilrnpools in northwestern Alberta (Rainbow, Zama, Virgo,rnand Shekilie) are excellent candidates of CO2 misciblernflood. Other Devonian carbonate pools are also highlyrnranked for the process. The screening and ranking canrnbe applied also by regions and/or by stratigraphicrninterval. The Viking Formation was chosen to illustraternthe application of this ranking methodology becausernthere is already a miscible CO2 flood operation at thernJoffre Viking pool.