AUTHOR=Yang Ying , Zhou Xiao-Feng , Sun Le-Yin , Wang An-Lun , Wei Jian-guang , Li Chen-Xi , Ke Xiang TITLE=Immiscible CO2 Flooding Efficiency in Low-Permeability Reservoirs: An Experimental Investigation of Residual Oil Distribution JOURNAL=Frontiers in Earth Science VOLUME=9 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/earth-science/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.693960 DOI=10.3389/feart.2021.693960 ISSN=2296-6463 ABSTRACT=

Residual oil distribution plays a critical role in understanding of the CO2 flooding processes, but its quantitative research for reservoirs with different permeability levels rarely has been comprehensively conducted in the laboratory. This article presents the results of an experimental study on the immiscible CO2 displacement efficiency in different permeability core samples and various oil distribution patterns prior to and after immiscible CO2 flooding. Experiments were conducted on four core samples extracted from the selected oil field with a permeability range from 0.210–66.077 mD. The experimental results show that the immiscible CO2 can mobilize oil in ultralow-permeability environment and achieve a reasonable displacement efficiency (40.98%). The contribution of different oil distribution patterns to displacement efficiency varies in reservoirs with different permeabilities. With the increase of core permeability, the contribution of cluster and intergranular pore oil distribution patterns to displacement efficiency increases. However, the oil displacement efficiency of corner and oil film patterns tends to increase with lower permeability. Therefore, immiscible CO2 flooding is recommended for ultralow-permeability case, especially for reservoirs with larger amount of oil in corner and oil film distribution patterns. The oil displacement efficiency calculated by immiscible CO2 flooding experiment results agrees reasonably well with the core frozen slices observation. The results of this study have practical significance that refers to the effective development of low-permeability reservoirs.