Abstract
Abstract
Cold heavy oil production with sand (CHOPS) is widely used as primary recovery method for heavy oil in western Canada. This process involves sand production in massive amounts. Sand production creates high permeability zones (wormholes) which extend the drainage radius. Typically 5–10% of the OOIP is recovered by this process. Therefore, the need to find a follow-up process is paramount.
The objective of this work was to experimentally evaluate the potential of using cyclic CO2 injection for recovering additional oil from depleted foamy oil reservoirs. A total of five depletion tests were conducted in a two meters long sandpack kept in a vertical orientation. The primary depletions at different depletion rates were followed by one or two huff-n-puff cycles of CO2 injection.
The total recovery factor after cyclic CO2 injection reached 30% indicating the potential of solvent injection as a secondary oil recovery method. Interestingly, the recovery after the cyclic CO2 injection was more or less independent of depletion rate used in the primary production. It was found that the cyclic CO2 injection was more efficient when the primary depletion was at slow rate and resulted in lower primary depletion recovery.
The results of this study show that it may be possible to re-energize the depleted heavy oil reservoirs by injecting CO2, especially those that did not give high recovery factors during the primary depletion.