Asphaltene laboratory assessment of a heavy onshore reservoir during pressure, temperature and composition variations to predict asphaltene onset pressure

摘要

An Iranian heavy oil reservoir recently encountered challenges in oil production rate, and further investigation has proven that asphaltene precipitation was the root cause of this problem. In addition, CO2 gas injection could be an appropriate remedy to enhance the production of heavy crudes. In this study, high pressure-high temperature asphaltene precipitation experiments were performed at different temperatures and pressures to investigate the asphaltene phase behavior during the natural depletion process and CO2 gas injection. Compositional modeling of experimental data predicted onset points at different temperatures which determine the zone of maximum probability of asphaltene precipitation for the studied heavy oil reservoir. Also, the effect of CO2 gas injection was investigated as a function of CO2 concentration and pressure. It was found that a CO2-oil ratio of 40% is the optimum for limiting precipitation to have the least formation damage and surface instrument contamination.