Surfactant in Fracturing Fluid: Enhancing Imbibition Oil Recovery or Blocking Pore Throats?

Abstract

Abstract Low recovery of fracturing water is partly due to fracturing fluid leak-off into formation and water trapping in matrix. In our previous studies (Soleiman Asl et al. 2019 and Yuan et al. 2019), we showed that using surfactant solutions in fracturing fluid can significantly enhance imbibition oil recovery. However, there is one critical question remained unanswered: What are the consequences of these additives on well performance during flowback and post-flowback processes? Can they block the pore-throats of rock matrix and induce formation damage? To answer this question, we develop and apply a comprehensive laboratory protocol on a tight core plug to simulate leak-off and flowback processes under reservoir pressure, with and without initial water saturation (Swi). We evaluate the possibility of pore-throat blockage by comparing pore-throat size distribution of the core plug and size distribution of the particles formed in a microemulsion (ME) solution. We also investigate the effects of Swi on effective oil permeability (koeff) after the flowback process. The results of leak-off and flowback tests using tap water as the base case shows that koeff after flowback is lower than that before the leak-off, mainly due to phase trapping. However, results of the tests using the ME solution show that koeff after flowback is greater than koeff before leak-off. This observation suggests that the leak-off of ME solution enhances regained oil relative permeability during flowback by reducing phase trapping and water blockage. When Swi = 0, the blockage of leaked-off fluid reduces koeff during the flowback process. The mean size of self-assembled structures (referred to as "particles" here) formed by mixing the ME solution with water is around 10-20 nm. The MICP profile of the core sample shows that around 95% of pore throats are bigger than the size of formed particles, suggesting low chance of pore-throat blockage by the suspended particles.