Coupling Low Salinity Water Flooding and Steam Flooding for Sandstone Reservoirs; Low Salinity-Alternating-Steam Flooding (LSASF)

Abstract

Low salinity water flooding and steam flooding are two novel combination flooding methods that were combined due to the important role of both methods in increasing oil recovery (especially heavy oil). Low salinity flooding was examined by many laboratory and field works and showed an interesting result. Steam flooding was tested on heavy oil fields and the heavy oil recovery increased by reducing oil viscosity. Although the steam showed an improvement in heavy oil recovery, the density difference between steam and heavy oil raised a problems with steam gravity override, channeling, and early breakthrough. For that reason, we developed the low salinity alternating steam flood (LSASF) in order to gather the benefits of low salinity, reduce oil viscosity by steam, and prevent the steam problems mentioned earlier. The laboratory experiments showed that the optimum scenario was Scenario (3). The shorter the injected cycles, the more oil recovery.

This combination of echnology can solve the steam flooding problems and support the steam by LS water, which has the ability to increase oil recovery.

Meeting Name

SPE Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Annual Technical Symposium and Exhibition (2018: Apr. 23-26, Dammam, Saudi Arabia)

Department(s)

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2018 Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Apr 2018

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