An Experimental Study of Improving Viscous Oil Recovery by Using Hybrid Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques: A Case Study of Alaska North Slope Reservoir

Summary Shallow reservoirs on the Alaska North Slope (ANS), such as Ugnu and West Sak-Schrader Bluff, hold approximately 12 to 17 × 109 barrels of viscous oil. Because of the proximity of these reservoirs to the permafrost, feasible nonthermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods are highly needed to exploit these oil resources. This study proposes three hybrid nonthermal EOR techniques, including high-salinity water (HSW) injection sequentially followed by low-salinity water (LSW) and low-salinity polymer (LSP) flooding (HSW-LSW-LSP), solvent-alternating-LSW flooding, and solvent-alternating-LSP flooding, to recover ANS viscous oils. The oil recovery performance of these hybrid EOR techniques has been evaluated by conducting coreflooding experiments. Additionally, constant composition expansion (CCE) tests, ζ potential determinations, and interfacial tension (IFT) measurements have been conducted to reveal the EOR mechanisms of the three proposed hybrid EOR techniques. Coreflooding experiments and IFT measurements have been conducted at reservoir conditions of 1,500 psi and 85°F, while CCE tests have been carried out at a reservoir temperature of 85°F. ζ potential determinations have been conducted at 14.7 psi and 77°F. The coreflooding experiment results have demonstrated that all of the three proposed hybrid EOR techniques could result in much better performance in reducing residual oil saturation than waterflooding and continuous solvent flooding in viscous oil reservoirs on ANS, implying better oil recovery potential. In particular, severe formation damage or blockage at the production end occurred when natural sand was used to prepare the sandpack column, indicating that the natural sand may have introduced some unknown constituents that may react with the injected solvent and polymer, resulting in a severe blocking issue. Our investigation on this is ongoing, and more detailed studies are being conducted in our laboratory. The CCE test results demonstrate that more solvent could be dissolved into the tested viscous oil with increasing pressure, simultaneously resulting in more oil swelling and viscosity reduction. At the desired reservoir conditions of 1,500 psi and 85°F, as much as 60 mol% of solvent could be dissolved into the ANS viscous oil, resulting in more than 31% oil swelling and 97% oil viscosity reduction. Thus, the obvious oil swelling and significant viscosity reduction resulting from solvent injection could lead to much better microscopic displacement efficiency during the solvent flooding. The ζ potential determination results illustrate that LSW resulted in more negative ζ potential than HSW on the interface between sand and water, indicating that lowering the salinity of injected brine could result in the sand surface being more water-wet, but adding polymer to the LSW could not further enhance the water wetness. The IFT measurement results show that the IFT between the tested ANS viscous oil and LSW is higher than that between the tested viscous oil and HSW, which conflicts with the commonly recognized IFT reduction effect by LSW flooding. Thus, the EOR theory of the LSW flooding in our proposed hybrid techniques may be attributed to low-salinity effects (LSEs) such as multi-ion exchange, expansion of electrical double layer, and salting-in effect, while water wetness enhancement may benefit the LSW flooding process to some extent. The LSP’s viscosity is much higher than the viscosities of LSW and solvent, so LSP injection could result in better mobility control in the tested viscous oil reservoirs, leading to improvement of macroscopic sweep efficiency. Combining these EOR theories, the proposed hybrid EOR techniques have the potential to significantly increase oil recovery in viscous oil reservoirs on ANS by maximizing the overall displacement efficiency.