Journal of Petroleum & Environmental Biotechnology

An experimental study of gas flooding to improve oil recovery in shale oil cores

World Congress on Petrochemistry and Chemical Engineering

November 18-20, 2013 Hilton San Antonio Airport, TX, USA

James Sheng and Talal Gamadi

Accepted Abstracts: J Pet Environ Biotechnol

Abstract:

Production from shale oil reservoirs has increased rapidly in recent years. The recovery factors from these kinds of reservoirs are expected to be around 5-10%. Recent numerical studies and models have revealed that gas flooding could be an effective alternative. This paper presents an experimental study on the subject. We used core plugs of Barnett, Marcos and Eagle Ford shales. A mineral oil (Soltrol 130) and a crude oil were used. Nitrogen and CO 2 gases were used. Our experimental results showed that the gas injection rate was limited by shale rocks. Without fractures, gas injection pressure suddenly shot up. Microfractures in the core plugs were needed to have reasonable injection rate and injection pressure. We used CT scanner to image the microfractures in the cores. Based on these observations, we optimized the injection-production configurations and development options. Our results showed that gas flooding might increase the recovery factor up to 20% depending on the injection pressure, available micro- fracture network, well configurations and development options. The results in this study provide the data needed for the future effort to study gas flooding potential in the large field scale. The results also provide us with the data to further evaluate the feasibility to gas flooding in the field.

Biography :

James Sheng is an Associate Professor in the petroleum department of Texas Tech University. He holds a Ph.D. degree from University of Alberta. He received several professional awards including the Outstanding Technical Editor Award (2005) and Outstanding Associate Editor Award (2008) for SPEREE, and the Best Paper Award in JCPT (1997). He is an author of many papers and a book of Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery.