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Abstract

Summary

It is common to consider the replacement of oil like the best option to reduce CO2 emissions and avoid climate change. However, it is not clear which alternative energy source could supply energy necessities. So, it is necessary to continue the exploration and the exploitation of hydrocarbons and incorporate CO2 management strategies to get carbon neutral projects as a win-win solution for business and for climate change mitigation goals. The main alternatives to manage CO2 associated with oil production are storage in deep saline aquifers and/or depleted reservoirs, and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Among these options EOR is the most attractive because mature oil fields are well characterized; they have facilities available and this practice can increase oil production typically between 5% and 15%.

Injecting CO2 into oil reservoirs to enhance oil recovery has been commercially used for several decades, with the first successful pilot tests conducted in the early 1960s in the state of Texas. CO2 storage in a common CO2-EOR project is over 30%. Around 20% of EOR production worldwide is associated with CO2 injection. This is about 500,000 bopd from 140 projects. Novel ways of conducting CO2-EOR offer commercial opportunities for oil producers while also ensuring permanent storage of large quantities of underground CO2. For example, if a recycling strategy is implemented, total CO2 injected could be stored at the end of the project.

This paper summarizes how a CO2-EOR injection pilot was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of this process in the field of study. Pilot results are fundamental to generate a robust field development strategy to use CO2 for incremental recovery. A CO2 pilot design involves reservoir numerical simulation. In this case, a field scale (1.5 million active cells) compositional model with water influx was built to evaluate different strategies and alternatives of fluid injection and production control. This model includes 25 years in the history phase and 20 years in the predictive phase. Different alternatives were evaluated including the kind of process (continuous CO2 injection or alternated with water), as well as key parameters such as injection rate, maximum permissible pressure, production control, CO2 recycling, among others.

Our results indicate that results, the best alternative for the CO2-EOR pilot is a water alternate gas (CO2-WAG) scheme with gas recycling and control of maximum gas rate production. Which shows a potential incremental oil recovery factor of 13%.

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/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.202331073
2023-10-02
2024-11-05
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References

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