Evaluation of an alkali-polymer flooding technique for enhanced oil recovery in Trinidad and Tobago
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ORIGINAL PAPER-EXPLORATION ENGINEERING
Evaluation of an alkali‑polymer flooding technique for enhanced oil recovery in Trinidad and Tobago Kyle Medica1 · Rean Maharaj1 · David Alexander1 · Mohammad Soroush1 Received: 21 May 2020 / Accepted: 8 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Trinidad and Tobago (TT) is seeking to develop more economical methods of enhanced oil recovery to arrest the decline in crude oil production and to meet the current and future energy demand. The utilization of alkaline-polymer flooding to enhance oil recovery in TT requires key studies to be conducted to obtain critical information of the flooding system (soil type, additive type, pH, adsorption characteristics and rheological (flow) characteristics). Understanding the role of, interplay and optimizing of these variables will provide key input data for the required simulations to produce near realistic projections of the required EOR efficiencies. The parameters of various wells in TT were compared to the screening criteria for alkali-polymer flooding, and the EOR 4 well was found to be suitable and thus selected for evaluation. Laboratory adsorption studies showed that the 1000 ppm xanthan gum flooding solution containing 0.25% NaOH exhibited the lowest absorption capacity for the gravel packed sand and exhibited the lowest viscosity at all the tested shear rates. The lowest adsorption was 2.27 × 10−7 lbmole/ft3 which occurred with the 1000 ppm xanthan gum polymer containing 0.25% NaOH, and the evidence showed that the polymer was adsorbed on the other side of the faults, indicating that it has moved further and closer to the producing well. Implementation of an alkali polymer flooding resulted in an incremental increase in the recovery factors (~ 3%) compared to polymer flooding; however, a change in the oil recovery as a function of the alkaline concentration was not observed. The simulated economic analysis clearly shows that all the analysed EOR scenarios resulted in economically feasible outcomes of net present value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and payback period for oil price variations between $35 and $60 USD per barrel of oil. A comparison of the individual strategies shows that the alkali-polymer flood system utilizing 0.25% sodium hydroxide with 1000 ppm xanthan gum is the best option in terms of cumulative production, recovery factor, NPV, IRR and time to payback. Keywords Alkali-polymer flood · Xanthan gum · Aquagel · EOR · Waterflood
Introduction The economy of Trinidad and Tobago (TT) is heavily reliant on the energy sector, and the GDP of the twin island republic has seen a decline since 2014 mainly due to fluctuating oil and natural gas commodity prices as well as a constant decrease in crude oil production. With specific reference to crude oil production, and as shown in Fig. 1, Trinidad and Tobago averaged 107.19 MBBL/D from 1994 until 2019, reaching an all-time high of 156 MBBL/D in March 2005 and a record low of 51 MBBL/D in March 2019. * Rean Maharaj [email protected] 1
University of Trinid
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