Evaluation of EOR potential of low salinity polymer in enhancing heavy oil recovery on the Alaska North Slope

• Main Author: Yin, Shize
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Scholars' Mine 2020
• Subjects: Petroleum Engineering; Alaska North Slope; north slope; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/masters_theses/7938; https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8941&context=masters_theses

"Alaska's North Slope (ANS) contains vast amount of viscous oil resources that have not been extracted. This study focuses on the investigation over the potential shown by low-salinity polymer flooding in improving the recovery of ANS heavy oil through laboratory experiments. At the beginning, coreflooding experiments were performed with silica sandpacks. The synergy between low-salinity water flooding and polymer flooding was proved, and the low-salinity polymer showed a better performance than the normal-salinity polymer. Further, the sandpacks prepared with formation sand from an oilfield on the ANS was then employed so as to simulate the reservoir condition. A series of experiments were carried out to investigate the effect imposed by the original wettability of the sand on the performance of oil recovery and the optimization of the injection sequence of the polymer solution. Moreover, this research studied the effect imposed by the starting time of polymer flooding on the oil recovery performance. It has been shown by all these experiments that low-salinity water flooding can recover more oil even after extensive normal-salinity water flooding. The low-salinity polymer flooding can produce more oil (3%-10% OOIP) even after extensive normal-salinity water flooding, low-salinity water flooding and polymer flooding. Starting from polymer flooding, the higher recovery efficiency can be achieved by about 10%. Wettability has a significant impact on the initial performance of water injection. The injection sequence of polymers with different salinities can affect the performance of oil recovery to a significant extent"--Abstract, page iii.