Injection Scheme to Reduce Retention and Improve Economics of Polymer Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract

Polymer enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has been successful in onshore and offshore reservoirs, and is especially promising for heavy oil or heterogeneous reservoirs. Polymer retention, mainly due to adsorption, results in the removal of polymer from the solution, leading to the formation of a polymer-free bank. Thus, determining the retention is a key factor in evaluating the feasibility of polymer flooding. This work investigates a method to reduce polymer adsorption and improve the economics of polymer EOR. This is done through laboratory experiments and reservoir simulation. The experimental investigations consisted of five dynamic retention core floodings in fresh and non-fresh high permeability sandstones. Five concentrations of a HPAM-AMPS in high salinity brine were tested. Two types of experiments were performed: fresh-adsorption, and re-adsorption. Injection of the polymer solution in porous media that had never been in contact with polymer composed the fresh-adsorption experiments. Differently, the re-adsorption experiments were performed in media that had been flushed with the same polymer previously. The experiments indicated a type IV isotherm for fresh-adsorption, while the re-adsorption isotherm was of type I. For a polymer concentration of 1250ppm, the fresh-adsorption was 166.7μg/g while the cumulative re-adsorption was 64.8μg/g. Therefore, reduction of ∼61% may be achieved by pre-flushing the medium with a low polymer concentration solution before the injection of the mobility control bank. Other properties of the polymeric system were measured in the core floodings to serve as inputs to the reservoir simulation model. The field-scale simulation studies evaluated the economic impact of the injection of a low concentration polymer slug to reduce polymer loss during EOR, such as observed in the re-adsorption experiments. The production strategy optimization was composed of eight steps, and targeted net present value (NPV) maximization. The case studied was a heavy oil offshore sandstone field, based on a benchmark. The strategy to reduce polymer retention represented a 4% increase in the final NPV over the conventional polymer flooding. Additionally, risk curve analysis demonstrated the advantage of this reduced-retention strategy over waterflooding and conventional polymer flooding. This work shows experimental evidence that polymer overall retention may be reduced through injection of a low polymer concentration bank prior to the mobility control one. Additionally, through numerical simulation and economic analysis, it indicates that the reduced retention allows for an economic advantage in polymer EOR, which may improve the feasibility of polymer flooding projects.