The Effect of Formation Water Salinity on the Minimum Miscibility Pressure of CO2-Crude Oil for Y Oilfield

• Main Authors: Yanfu Pi, Jinxin Liu, Li Liu, Xuan Guo, Chengliang Li, Zhihao Li
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-09-01
• Series: Frontiers in Earth Science
• Subjects: CO2 miscible flooding; minimum miscibility pressure; formation water salinity; core displacement experiment; CO2-formation water-rock interaction experiment
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.711695/full

CO2 miscible flooding is an important technology for enhancing oil recovery and greenhouse gas storage in the world. As a tertiary recovery technology, it is usually applied after water flooding. Therefore, the actual reservoirs usually contain a lot of injected water in addition to connate water. The salinity of these formation waters varies from place to place. CO2 is an acid gas. After it is injected into the reservoir, it easily reacts with formation water and rock and affects the physical properties of the reservoir. However, no research results have been reported whether this reaction affects the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) of CO2-crude oil, a key parameter determining miscible flooding in formation water. Based on CO2-formation water–rock interaction experiments, this paper uses the core flooding method to measure the CO2-crude oil MMP under different salinity in formation water. Results show that CO2 causes a formation water pH decrease from 7.4 to 6.5 due to its dissolution in formation water. At the same time, CO2 reacts with formation water, albite, potassium feldspar, and carbonate minerals in the cores to generate silicate and carbonate precipitates, which could migrate to the pore throat together with the released clay particles. Overall, CO2 increased core porosity by 5.63% and reduced core permeability by 7.43%. In addition, when the salinity of formation water in cores was 0, 4,767, and 6,778 mg/L, the MMP of CO2-crude oil was 20.58, 19.85, and 19.32 MPa, respectively. In other words, the MMP of CO2-crude oil decreased with the increase of salinity of formation water.