Feasibility Study of Alkali-Surfactant-Polymer Flooding On Enhancing Heavy-Oil Recovery in a Heterogeneous Thin Reservoir

摘要

This study presents the feasibility of chemical flooding in a thin heavy oil reservoir using numerical simulations. The effects of heterogeneity in sweeping efficiency were partly investigated through the oil saturation at predefined sections. After that, the optimizations of two most representative flooding schemes were carried out considering the variation of oil price at a specific expensing condition. The profiles of oil saturation indicated a dominant swept layer where the horizontal wells were located regardless the higher permeability of other layers. In other words, fluid flow is not uniform even in a thin formation. The optimization results of two considering ASP schemes at a specific economic condition figured out the best flooding scheme by mean of comparing net present values (NPV), in particular the referenced consideration of oil prices substantially demonstrated the full feasibility of that ASP injection scheme in a given heavy oil characteristic even though the sweeping flows seemed to not be expectedly favorable in the reservoir.