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Low Salinity Oil Recovery (Synthetic Limestone Cores Experimental Study)

Abstract Low salinity water-flooding (LSF) is an emerging IOR/EOR technology that can improve oil recovery. The attraction is due to its simplicity and relatively low cost. As a matter of fact, the incremental recoveries are in quite promising range of stock tank oil initially in place (STOIIP). Being a natural extension of the conventional water flooding (WF), LSF is easier to implement than any other EOR methods. However, the processes of screening, designing and implementing of LSF projects require an increase operator capability and management focus compared to the conventional water-flooding. In this paper, we presented an experimental study dealing with secondary/tertiary recovery tests with an understanding of comparison effect of injected brine salinity on oil recovery. Synthetic limestone cores, different concentrations of brine salinity, and 30.4 API oil were used to run the experiment. The pertinent study was completed in a temperature range of 77 oF to 125 oF. The results showed that oil recovery was significantly increased by lowsalinity compared to higher salinity brine floods. Ultimately, the experimental results revealed that substantial tertiary oil recovery beyond conventional water-flooding can be achieved by altering the salinity content of field injection water. Introduction Water-flooding is the most applied method for recovering oil from the reservoirs. The salinity and ion composition of the injection water in the past have not been considered as a key parameter in oil recovery from water-flooded reservoirs. LSF is now recognized as an emerging technology in the water-flooding EOR. Attention to the water injected salinity is a critical factor affecting oil recovery in water-flooding operations. Several field and laboratory studies showed that injected brine composition, salinity, rock and oil properties has a significant impact on the oil recovery. The idea of injecting low salinity water into the petroleum reservoirs had been addressed since the 1960s. Bernard (1967) demonstrated that injection of fresh water both in secondary and tertiary modes could increase the oil recovery from sandstone cores containing

clays; he also stated that fresh water-flooding usually caused permeability impairment and relatively high pressure drops (Ali A. Yousef et al., 2011). The research work and investigation of effect of low salinity water-flooding had been introduced by Jadhunandan and Morrow (1991 and 1995). Morrow et al., in 90s conducted a first low salinity water-flooding detailed study as an EOR method (Yildiz and Morrow, 1996a and 1996b; Tang and Morrow, 1997). Later on, extensive research works (Tang and Morrow, 2002; Zhang and Morrow, 2006; Zhang et al., 2007) have developed this idea into an emerged trend. The research efforts of Webb et al., (2005a), Lager et al. 2006 and 2007 had confirmed and validated the new trend through reservoir conditions core-flood experiments. Lager et al., 2007 reported that average increase in oil recovery in more than 20 reservoir core-flood experiments was around 14%. Saudi Aramco, through its upstream research arm (the Advanced Research Center) has initiated a research program tagged Smart Water-Flood to explore the potential of increasing oil recovery by tuning the injection water properties e.g., salinity, ionic composition, interfacial tension, viscosity, etc., (Ali A. Yousef et al., 2011). BP, carried out a large program on low salinity injection and proposed additional recovery mechanisms (Mc Guire and Chatham, 2005; Lager et al. 2006). In recent years, from some laboratory studies verified by some field tests (mainly sandstones have shown that injecting low salinity water has a significant impact on oil recovery (Ali A. Yousef et al., 2011). On the other-hand the potential for carbonates has not been thoroughly investigated (Lager et al., 2006; Doust et al., 2009). Some pilot tests have given comparable results (Webb et al., 2004; Mc Guire et al., 2005; Lager et al., 2008; 2010; Vledder et al., 2010). In the recent past it was reported that direct water-flooding of a reservoir with fresh water gave much higher recovery than expected (Batias et al., 2009). Low salinity water

flooding has received growing attention over the past five years (Alotaibi and Nasr-El-Din, 2009; Lager et al., 2006, 2007 and 2008; Seccombe et al., 2008; Patil et al., 2008; Lebedeva et al., 2009; Ligthelm et al., 2009; Ashraf et al., 2010; Kumar et al., 2010.)

Mechanism The extent of increase in oil recovery by low salinity brine flooding is highly specific to crude oil-brine-rock (COBR) combinations and cannot be predicted [3]. Due to the complexity of crude oil-brine-rock interactions there is no clear mechanism for the reason behind the low salinity effect on increasing oil recovery. In order to optimize the brine composition and salinity it is important to understand the responsible mechanisms. Three main mechanisms that affect waterflooding performance and play a role in displacement process will be discussed: wettability, capillary pressure, and interfacial tension (IFT). In this work IFT test were made on different water salinity.

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