Assessment of CO2 Flooding Potential for Bakken Formation, Saskatchewan

Abstract

Abstract The Bakken is an extremely tight formation, with the oil contained mostly in siltstone and sandstone reservoirs with low porosity and permeability. In Saskatchewan alone, there could be an estimated 25 to 100 billion barrels of Bakken oil in place. At present, the combination of horizontal well drilling and the new multi-stage fracturing and completion technologies has been the key to economically unlocking the vast reserves of the Bakken formation. The primary recovery factor, however, remains rather low due to high capillary trapping. While waterflooding could result in unfavorable injectivity issues, carbon dioxide (CO2) miscible flooding provides a promising option for increasing the recovery factor. Higher oil recovery factor can be achieved with CO2 injection through multi-contact miscibility that results in vanishing interfacial tension, viscosity reduction, and oil swelling. This paper conducted a numerical simulation work as an effective and economical means of evaluating CO2 flooding potential for enhanced oil recovery. Different strategies were tested to compare the effects on oil recovery of injection well pattern, continuous and cyclic injection, waterflooding and CO2 flooding, injected gas composition, and heterogeneity. The simulation results show that CO2 flooding presents a technically promising method for recovering the vast Bakken oil.