Enhanced Oil Recovery
The Integrated Reservoir Solutions Division of Core Laboratories is proposing a joint industry laboratory investigation of enhanced oil recovery for the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas. This project follows our highly successful joint industry project entitled Eagle Ford Shale Evaluation – Reservoir Characterization and Production Properties which was conducted for over 40 operators.
In this project we recognized that liquids production has a steep decline curve and recovery factors are estimated to be less than 10% of OOIP. Many wells were initially produced at too high of a drawdown resulting in acceleration of pressure-dependent permeability loss, early pressure drop below the bubble point and preferential gas phase mobility (increasing GOR), all resulting in low recovery factors.
Therefore, there is a need to assess the effectiveness of recovery techniques available in order to improve the displacement of oil from the nanodarcy matrix, maintain profitable production rates, extend the life of assets, and increase the ultimate oil recovery.
The major objective of this project is to provide Eagle Ford operators with laboratory EOR data and results on their specific reservoirs at simulated reservoir conditions. Not only will operators receive results on their own reservoirs but also on other operators’ reservoirs, which should span black oil, volatile oil and retrograde condensate reservoirs across the play. The specific project objectives are listed below.
- Evaluate the potential oil recovery for cyclic gas injection under various conditions utilizing PVT data, fresh core samples, and reservoir fluid and injection gas.
- Determine miscible conditions for gas injection shut in time (soaking period) and optimum number of cycles to maximize oil recovery
- Determine the produced fluid composition for each gas injection cycle