Recently, there has been a closer attention of the scientific community to gas-enhanced methods of increasing oil recovery (EOR) which is primarily due to the need to increase the oil recovery at brown fields, to practice rational use of petroleum gas, and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, gas EOR projects can at the same time represent very promising and potential methods of extracting hard-to-recover reserves (low-permeable and low-productive reservoirs, highly-viscous oil reservoirs, etc.). Currently many oil and gas companies are conducting scientific research to evaluate the performance of such projects. The main challenge is the development of scientifically based approaches to assessing the performance of gas EOR projects and selecting appropriate subsurface targets. A key and significant stage of the scientific research is laboratory testing which allows to study the physical processes occurring in a reservoir system, to capture the oil recovery mechanisms, and to obtain experimental data necessary to build compositional models to perform further feasibility study of projects.
The article describes the methodology and laboratory and methodological base for conducting comprehensive experimental studies within scientific support of gas EOR projects, as well as the results of studies of petroleum gas performance to increase oil recovery from one of the East Siberian fields. The methodology of laboratory research provides for the sequential execution of the following set of activities: making up and measuring the properties of core and reservoir fluids, making up recombined fluid samples, running routine and special set of PVT studies, evaluating parameters of interaction of reservoir fluids and a gas agent, running core flow studies, assessing risks and negative factors during gas injection, performing flow simulation runs on linear reservoir models. The main purpose of laboratory studies is an early assessment of petroleum gas performance to increase oil recovery of a particular reservoir and to obtain the necessary input data for further scaling-up and making a feasibility study of an EOR project. The comprehensive studies have confirmed the high potential of gas agents for the reservoir under study. The proposed comprehensive studies methodology will be rolled out within the perimeter of the Tyumen Petroleum Research Center with scientific support of gas EOR projects.
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