Extended Proposal

Experimental Investigation on WAG-CO2 Injection In Presence of Asphaltene

By

Mohd Zainudin P.Ramle 13602 Petroleum Engineering

Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS Bandar Seri Iskandar 31750 Tronoh Perak darul Ridzuan

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background

After years of hydrocarbon production under natural drive mechanism, there will be pressure depletion and oil can no longer produce at its own natural drive. In order to maintain the reservoir pressure, secondary oil recovery methods are introduced to optimize hydrocarbon production. Water injection, gas lift and reinjection of natural gas are among the methods used in secondary recovery. This will increase hydrocarbon production about 35 - 45 %. As pressure continues to deplete, secondary recovery method will no longer be effective as water breakthrough into production already exceeded the economical limit. After secondary recovery, there are still large amount of oil that can be recovered which is why tertiary recovery or better known as enhanced oil recovery is needed. This recovery method focuses on increasing the mobility of oil so that more oil can be recovered to surface. For this recovery, steam, surfactant and inert gas such as carbon dioxide (CO2) are used to alter some of the fluid properties inside the reservoir. This study will be focusing on enhanced oil recovery by water-alternating-gas (WAG) using CO2 in the presence of asphaltene. Asphaltene has been the main focus for CO2 flooding especially for light oil reservoir even though there is only minute amount of asphaltene in light oil compared to high asphaltene content in heavy oil. This scenario had been observed in many cases worldwide and became a very serious problem to production. From this study also, it is expected that a better solution will be suggested to encounter the asphaltene problem.

1.2 Problem statement

CO2 injection as enhanced oil recovery had caused several problems rising from precipitation of asphaltene particles existing in the reservoir oil especially light oil. This had caused many problems in piping system, tubing, wellbore and even the reservoir itself. Oil and gas companies had to spend thousands of money a year just
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to solve the problem. Until now, there is no single definite solution on how to actually prevent the precipitation of asphaltene from occurring. Despite many efforts has been done to prevent the process, none truly succeeded. If one can come out with a solution to predict the onset of the precipitation and optimum conditions for the precipitation, a standard procedure can be created to prevent the asphaltene from precipitating during CO2 flooding. Through this study, the author will do experimental work on CO2 flooding in the presence of asphaltene in order to encounter the problem.

1.3 Objectives and scope of study

i. ii. iii. iv.

To study the effect of pressure changes during pure CO2 flooding To study the conditions that allows asphaltene precipitation in reservoir oil To predict onset of asphaltene precipitation during CO2 flooding To investigate possible ways of preventing or slowing down asphaltene precipitation during CO2 flooding

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORY

Water-alternating-gas (WAG) has been greatly implemented all around the world as a successful tertiary oil recovery method or enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Initially, this method was conducted to enhance the sweep efficiency in gas injection process. It can either be done alternately or simultaneously with gas injection. The combination of water injection which improves the sweep efficiency and gas flooding which reduces the effect of viscous fingering has been proven to be a successful EOR method in oil and gas industries. Injection of gas into reservoir to increase oil recovery has been a widely used enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method after steam flooding. Non-hydrocarbon gases such as nitrogen (N2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) has been on attention for EOR method. CO2 flooding, with its abundance sources, environmental friendly and can achieve miscibility with oil easier than any other gases has been the main choice of enhanced oil recovery especially for light oil reservoir. This method had been extensively used nowadays in order to extract more oil from the reservoir. There are many factors of CO2 flooding that contributes to oil recovery and the main factors are viscosity reduction and oil swelling. R.K Srivastava et al proved through his laboratory study that these two factors contributed most to oil recovery using CO2 flooding. From the study also, it is shown that viscosity reduces almost linearly with concentration of CO2. The first contact between CO2 and oil is normally immiscible due to different composition but once CO2 concentration increases and mixed with solution gas, exchange of components through multiple contacts between the gases cause the CO2 to have the same component as hydrocarbon and this will cause miscible contact between CO2 and oil. The term minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) has been of great interest in laboratory investigation where it explains the minimum required pressure for CO2 flooding to be miscible process with oil. Y. Hao stated in a paper entitled Laboratory Investigation of CO2 Flooding that reservoir temperature and oil composition are the contributing factors for the value of MMP
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using CO2. In other experiment conducted by M.Dong et al. claimed that CO2 MMP is related to solution gas by the amount of the solution gas and the ratio of light-tointermediate component in the gas. It is known through various field experiences and laboratory studies that injection of CO2 will cause precipitation of asphaltene especially in light oil. Many oil and gas operator underestimate the presence of small amount of asphaltene in light oil compared to large percentage in crude oil because these problems are not observed during primary and secondary recovery. The best example is crude oil from Boscan field in Venezuela that has about 17 wt% asphaltene almost have no problem while Hassi_Messaoud in Algeria that has only 0.15 wt% asphaltene faced so many production problems due to asphaltene precipitation. Once CO2 flooding started, many unexpected production problems occur due to asphaltene precipitation inside tubing, wellbore, production line and even surface facilities. All these problems had caused thousands of money a year that need to be spent to control and solve the problem. Presence of asphaltene precipitate had also cause porosity alteration, reduction in permeability, wettability changes and eventually formation damage. Many factors can be associated to this such as composition changes during CO2 flooding, pressure and temperature changes, and concentration of injected CO2. Asphaltene particles are surrounded by resin and when CO2 is injected, the resin will be destabilized causing the asphaltene particle to move freely and attracted to each other. According to Sarma (2003), CO2 injection will cause a pH change that later causes the destabilization of asphaltene particle. The particles then tend to accumulate and flow together with oil to surface and some will settle out of oil flow and accumulate on rock surfaces. Asphaltene precipitating on rock surface have a high possibility to change the wetability of rock to oil-wet besides altering porosity and reducing permeability. Many laboratory studies and research has been conducted to fully understand the behavior of asphaltene during CO2 flooding and yet no definite explanation has been achieved.

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research paper Gaining information regarding WAG-CO2 flooding in presence of asphaltene is one of the best ways to understand the concepts and idea of the whole process. The papers also provide the best platform to know the current methods and achievement in this EOR technique. In order to get the latest information from SPE papers, only paper publish from year 2000 until current are taken as references.

3.2 Laboratory experiment Since this study focuses on experimental study, there are few laboratory procedures need to be conducted to achieve the main objectives. 3.2.1 Slim Tube Displacement Experiment This experiment will be conducted to determine the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) during CO2 flooding. Slim tube miscible equipment will be used for this experiment as shown in Figure 1. Basically this experiment will determine the minimum pressure required for injected CO2 to gain multicontact miscibility with oil. 3.2.2 CO2 Flooding for Asphaltene Measurement There are few steps that will be conducted during this experiment: i. Core Evaluation Using Helium Porosimeter (Poroperm) to obtain porosity and permeability of core ii. Core Preparation Berea sandstone will be saturated with designed brine at specific temperature and pressure

iii. Crude Oil Evaluation Light Malaysian crude oil will be evaluated for asphaltene content using ASTM D3279-07 Standard Test Method for nHeptane Insoluble (S.S Alian et al. 2011) as shown in Figure 2 iv. Crude Oil Injection Core will be saturated with crude oil v. CO2 Injection Inject CO2 at varying pressure to know the effect of pressure changes during CO2 flooding vi. Analysis of Asphaltene Recovered oil will be analyzed to note on asphaltene content changes 3.2.3 Effect of CO2 flooding on pH value of injected water (brine) The main aim is to obtain the pH value that onset the precipitation of asphaltene. Changes in pH value on injected water (brine) during the CO2 flooding will be noted. 3.2.4 Project Timeline As shown in Table 1, the author succeeded in completing and sending the extended proposal according to the time frame given which is in week six.
Table 1 Project timeline for FYP 1

References

Alian, S.S. , Omar, A.A. , Altaee, A.F. , & Irzie H. (2011) Study of Asphaltene Precipitation Induced Formation Damage during CO2 Injection for a Malaysia Light Oil Yongmao, H. , Zenggui, W. , Yueming, J.B.C. , Xiangjie, L. , & Petro, X. (2004) Laboratory Investigation of CO2 Flooding , SPE88883 Sarma, H.K. (2003) Can We Ignore Asphaltene in a Gas Injection Project for LightOils? , SPE 84877 Altaee A.F. , Saaid, I.M. , Masoudi, R. (2010) Carbon Dioxide Injection and Asphaltene Precipitation in Light Oil Reservoirs Sanchez, N.L. , (1999) Management of Water Alternating Gas (WAG) Injection Projects, SPE 53714

Appendices

Figure 1 RUSKA 2328-86 slim tube displacement equipments

Figure 2 RUSKA (USA) experimental equipments for oil properties