Monte Carlo Simulation of the CO₂ Flooding Efficiency at a Core Scale for Different Oil Compositions

Abstract

The evaluation of water-alternating-gas (WAG) efficiency and profitability is complicated by a large number of reservoir, operating, and economic parameters and constraints. This study aims at understanding the influence of the oil composition on different WAG injections. By employing compositional reservoir modeling and the Monte Carlo method to characterize the diversity of oils occurring in nature, we simulate the microscopic displacement efficiency of CO2 flooding when it is applied to both light- and heavy-oil reservoirs. We find that the economic performance of WAG in both miscible and immiscible scenarios is mainly characterized by the dimensionless injection rate and the oil density at surface conditions. Neither the bubble point pressure nor the minimum miscibility pressure can be used for the quantification of the optimal WAG parameters. We present our estimates of the best strategies for the miscible and immiscible injections and verify some of our previous results for randomly sampled oils. In particular, we demonstrate that CO2 flooding is better to apply at higher-dimensionless injection rates. We show that the injection of CO2 organized at a light-oil reservoir results in a higher profitability of WAG, although this comes at the cost of lower carbon storage efficiency.

Keywords

• enhanced oil recovery
• CO₂ flooding
• microscopic displacement efficiency
• net present value
• Monte Carlo method