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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Chem.
Sec. Molecular Liquids
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fchem.2024.1408115
This article is part of the Research Topic Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery View all articles

Development of Surfactant Formulation for High Temperature Offshore Carbonate Reservoirs

Provisionally accepted
Kishore Mohanty Kishore Mohanty *Krishna Panthi Krishna Panthi
  • The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The residual oil left behind after waterflood in petroleum reservoirs can be mobilized by surfactant formulations that yield ultralow interfacial tension (IFT) with oil. However, finding ultralow IFT surfactant formulations is difficult for high temperature, off-shore, carbonate reservoirs. These reservoirs are often water-flooded with seawater (with a lot of divalent ions) which are often incompatible with many surfactants at high temperatures. The goal of this research is to develop a surfactant formulation for an off-shore carbonate reservoir at 100 °C previously flooded by seawater. Surfactant-oil-brine phase behavior was studied for formulations starting from a single surfactant to mixtures of surfactants and a cosolvent. Mixtures of three surfactants and one cosolvent were needed to produce ultralow IFT formulations for the oil of interest. The surfactant system with polymer mobility control was tested in crushed reservoir rock packs. The cumulative oil recovery was > 99% for the surfactant-polymer (SP) flood with an optimal salinity gradient.The constant salinity SP floods with seawater increased oil recovery significantly beyond the waterflood (cumulative oil recovery > 91%), even though the recovery was lower than that of the optimal salinity gradient SP flood. Our experimental work demonstrates the effectiveness of the surfactant formulation for a high temperature carbonate reservoir at the seawater salinity.

    Keywords: surfactant, SP flood, high temperature, Enhanced Oil Recovery, Carbonate Reservoirs

    Received: 27 Mar 2024; Accepted: 18 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Mohanty and Panthi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Kishore Mohanty, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States

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