A Novel Improved Oil Recovery Approach for Increasing Capillary Number by Enhancing Depth of Penetration in Abu Dhabi Carbonate Reservoirs

摘要

During the last few decades, there has been a global increase in oil demand by 35%. Besides, the petroleum industry is faced with a number of challenges when considering the reservoir such as low sweep efficiency, formation damage and implementing costly techniques to enhance and improve the oil recovery. Electrokinetic Low-concentration acid IOR (EK LCA-IOR) is one of the emerging IOR technologies, which involves the application of the Low-concentration acidizing integrated with electrically enhanced oil recovery (EK-EOR). This research focusses on analyzing the effectiveness of the EK LCA-IOR process in Abu Dhabi carbonates, improving the capillary number and enhancing depth of penetration. Core-flood tests were conducted by saturating Abu Dhabi carbonate core-plugs with medium crude oil in a specially designed core-flood setup at Abu Dhabi reservoir conditions. After the waterflooding stage, EK LCA-IOR was applied using varying voltage gradients and acid concentrations upto 1.2% HC1 injected at the anode and transported by EK to the target producer (cathode). Moreover, the capillary number change, oil viscosity change and Single Energy CT Scan (SECTS) results were analyzed in order to observe the effect on rock-fluid interaction to control rock adsorption capacity through interfacial tension and depth of penetration.