CO2 - EOR methods applied in a heterogeneous reservoir with light oil

under high pressure and low temperature

Eliana L. Ligero, Helena, F.A. Scanavini, Denis J. Schiozer

The use of enhanced oil recovery methods (EOR) is motivated by the characteristics of the Brazilian
pre-salt fields, such as heterogeneous reservoirs under high pressure and low temperature, light fluids
with a certain amount of CO2. This produced gas cannot be all released to atmosphere in order to
prevent the greenhouse effect. So, this work presents the study of a light oil with 8% of CO2, with an
Equation of State (EOS) well-adjusted, applied in three different compositional simulation cases:
miscible continuous CO2 injection, WAG – CO2 with or without relative permeability hysteresis. As
the hysteresis effect can reduce the gas mobility, causing its displacement through areas that were not
initially swept, it was included in the WAG modelling. The results were analysed in terms of average
reservoir pressure and production parameters. Both WAG processes (with and without hysteresis)
resulted in higher oil production than the continuous CO2 injection, attesting that the water injected in
WAG reduced the gas mobility. In the results, it was observed that when the reservoir simulation is a
tool applied to predict the oil production, the hysteresis phenomenon should be considered to model a
WAG injection, once the relative permeability changes with the injection fluids alternation.

75th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2013

London, UK, 10-13 June 2013
Introduction

There are several challenges involving the Brazilian pre-salt fields, such as long distance from the
shore, heterogeneous reservoirs at high depths and high gas oil ratios (GOR). Associated to these
characteristics, the CO2 present in the reservoir fluid, the concern about the quantity of this gas
emitted to the atmosphere because of the greenhouse effect motivated the use of enhanced oil
recovery methods (EOR) since the first stages of field activity, aiming an oil recovery economically
advantageous. Due to offshore limitations such as logistic and injection fluids plants, an EOR method
to be applied in such fields should consider the advantages of the availability of sea water and
produced or imported CO2. In this context, continuous gas injection or water-alternating-gas injection
(WAG) can be alternatives to recovery oil from the pre-salt reservoirs (Pizarro and Branco, 2012).

But, as it is known, the CO2 continuous injection may present low sweeping efficiency, due to the
highly gas mobility. Thus, this kind of injection may not recovery an economically significant amount
of oil. In order to soften this deficiency, Caudle and Dyes (1958) proposed the WAG process.
According to these authors, this process would improve the sweep efficiency of the gas through water
injection, which controls the displacement efficiency and stabilizes the gas front. According to
Christensen et al. (2001), the WAG process combines the favorable aspects of gas injection (better oil
displacement) and water flooding (better macroscopic sweep). The water also helps to maintain the
reservoir pressure, making the gas front more stable; while the gas is responsible for reducing the oil
residual saturation (Sohrabi et al., 2008).

The prediction of light oil recovery by the injection of miscible CO2 (continuous or WAG) requires
the use of a reservoir compositional simulator, as well as a good understanding of phase behavior,
injection gas and reservoir heterogeneities in order to avoid the anticipated gas breakthrough. Rosa
(2010) emphasizes that a correct fluid modelling is essential to simulate any gas injection process.
Although a larger reduction in the number of the fluid components is very important to speed up the
simulation, an adequate EOS adjustment to model the fluid can have a large impact in the simulation
results, so it has to be done very carefully. Another important point to be considered is the relative
permeability hysteresis to model the WAG process.

This study compared the miscible CO2 injection, WAG with or without relative permeability
hysteresis; in a heterogeneous reservoir, with the EOR method applied since the beginning of the field
life. The scenario was similar to the Brazilian pre-salt fields: high pressure, low temperature and light
oil with dissolved CO2. The results were analysed in terms of average reservoir pressure, cumulative
oil production and fluid rates, to show the impact of hysteresis in the oil production forecast.

WAG and relative permeability hysteresis

During WAG, the alternate injection of water and gas causes the phenomena of imbibition and
drainage to occur consecutively. Thus, the hysteresis refers to the irreversibility of the saturation paths
during the drainage and imbibition processes (Hosseini et al., 2012). Similarly, Spiteri and Juanes
(2006) describe the hysteresis as irreversibility or path dependence. In multiphase flow, the hysteresis
manifests through the dependence of the relative permeabilities on the saturation path and the
saturation history. For example, in two-phase systems, there are only two possible ways for saturation
to vary: if the phase saturation increases, the other phase saturation decreases and vice versa. In the
results reported by Shahverdi et al. (2012), it was observed that there is dependence among the
relative permeabilities of oil, water and gas phases in several cycles during WAG.

According to Spiteri and Juanes (2006), processes with strong flow reversals present larger hysteresis
effects. And that is the case of WAG injections, in which the gas phase is trapped during water
flooding after gas flood. So the relative permeability hysteresis should be considered for WAG
modelling, as it is capable of reducing the gas mobility, causing its displacement through areas that
were not initially swept. Most relative permeability models that incorporate hysteresis, such as
Killough (1976), are based on the trapping model proposed by Land (1968).

75th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2013

London, UK, 10-13 June 2013
Methodology

The methodology was proposed to adjust the injection rates in order to ensure the same average
reservoir pressure profile in all injection processes. The three studied cases were: (1) simulations of
only CO2 continuous injection; (2) simulations of the WAG-CO2 injection using a gas rate established
in item (1) and adjusting the water rate to ensure the same average pressure profile; (3) simulations of
the WAG process considering hysteresis, with the water and gas rates previously defined; (4) analysis
of results from all simulations. The results were investigated considering technical parameters such as
the reservoir average pressure, cumulative oil production, oil rate and gas-oil rate.

Some important considerations were made in the present work. A unique equation of state (EOS) was
used to represent the phase behavior, the number of EOS pseudocomponents was the same in all
studied cases and the reservoir temperature was equal to the one from the experimental PVT data. It
was supposed that a sufficient amount of pure CO2 was available to attend the gas demand in the
processes. The definition of the operational conditions of the WAG process did not intend to
maximize the economic return or the oil production. The injector wells were operated at a constant
rate and the producers were operated above the saturation pressure of the fluid. The reservoir average
pressure and were maintained above the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) of CO2 in the oil to
ensure a miscible displacement.

Application

The reservoir fluid was a light oil with 8% molar of CO2 (Moortgat et al., 2010) and the phase
behavior was represented by a PR-EOS consisting of seven pseudocomponents. As the PVT
experimental data, including swelling test, used to adjust the EOS were obtained at constant
temperature (137.75°F), all simulation models were operated at this temperature. The simulation runs
were executed in a commercial compositional reservoir simulator.

The heterogeneous model studied was a 3D regular Cartesian grid with 20x80x14 cells, based on
model 2 of the tenth SPE comparative solution project (Christie and Blunt, 2001). Its main
characteristics are high heterogeneity in porosity and permeability. The production strategy had 12
producer and 6 injector wells disposed in a line drive scheme. In the WAG-CO2, the injector wells
were shut-in and shut-off in order to change the injection fluid. Water was the first fluid injected
during the first 360 days of simulation. After that, the CO2 was injected. This sequence of injection
fluids (cycles of 360 days) was followed during the entire simulation period (10080 days).

The relative permeability hysteresis was modeled based on the method proposed by Killough (1976).
According to the procedure, it is possible to consider the hysteresis effect in the oil-water phase
(krow). In the modeling of krow hysteresis, the maximum residual oil saturation in the imbibition
corresponds to the midpoint of the allowable range for the krow available data. Although this method
could also be applied to predict the hysteresis effect in the gas phase, it was not included in this study.

Results and Discussion

The average reservoir pressure is shown in Figure 1a. The pressure profiles from all simulation cases
are practically the same, as it was intended. It was possible to maintain the average pressure always
above the saturation point of the fluid (5580 psia), and also guarantee the CO2 miscible displacement
during the processes, considering that the MMP for the fluid was around 3700 psia (Yuan et al.,
2004). Figure 1b shows that the gas injection rates were maintained constant along the simulations in
all processes, as it was supposed.

Figure 2a presents the cumulative oil production. It can be observed that WAG injection resulted in a
higher oil production, comparing to the continuous CO2 injection. This result was expected once the
water injected in WAG reduces the gas mobility, improving the oil recovery, as reported in the
literature (Caudle and Dyes, 1958; Sohrabi et al., 2008). It can also be noted that the relative

75th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2013

London, UK, 10-13 June 2013
permeability hysteresis influenced the oil production, showing that it is important to consider it when
the production is predicted through simulation. In the studied case, the hysteresis implementation
caused a reduction in the oil recovery; despite this decrease, the WAG with hysteresis was still
capable to produce more oil than the continuous CO2 process. These higher oil productions in the
WAG resulted from a less accentuated decrease in the oil rate during the simulation (Figure 2b).

As expected, the GOR shown in Figure 3, presented higher values in the CO2 injection (around 4400
ft3/bbl) than in the WAG (3800 and 2800 ft3/bbl with and without hysteresis, respectively). It was
caused by the bigger amount of gas injected in the reservoir, in the first case. It highlights that the
WAG processes request smaller quantities of CO2 than the continuous gas injection, to obtain a higher
oil production. It is an important feature when there is a limit of CO2 available to inject. Comparing
the two cases of WAG, the fact that the hysteresis reduced the oil rate faster, with the same amount of
CO2 injected, explains the lower oil production, and also the higher GOR.

Figure 1 – (a) Average Pressure in the reservoir; (b) CO2 injection rate.

Figure 2 – (a) Cumulative oil produced; (b) Oil rate.

Figure 3 – Gas Oil Ratio.

75th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2013

London, UK, 10-13 June 2013
Conclusions

As it was intended, the gas injection rates were kept constant and the pressure profiles from all
injection methods were practically the same. It was possible to maintain the reservoir pressure always
above saturation point and MMP, guaranteeing a miscible gas injection. Both WAG processes (with
and without hysteresis) resulted in higher oil production, in comparison to the continuous CO2
injection, as expected, attesting that the water injected in WAG reduced the gas mobility, improving
the oil recovery. The studied cases showed that not considering the hysteresis effect in the simulation
models underestimated the oil recovery. Following what is reported in the literature, when reservoir
simulation is a tool applied to predict the oil production, it is necessary to consider the hysteresis
effect when modelling a WAG injection, once the relative permeability changes with the cycles of
injection fluids.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Petrobras, CEPETRO / UNICAMP and CMG for their support.

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75th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2013

London, UK, 10-13 June 2013