The poor rock quality and matrix permeability several orders of magnitude lower than conventional oil reservoirs observed in unconventional liquid reservoirs (ULR) presents many uncertainties on the storage capacity of the rock and the possibility of enhancing recovery. The technological advances in multiple stage hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have improved the overall profitabil...

We describe a poreto reservoir-scale investigation of wettability variation and its impact on waterflooding. We use a three-dimensional pore-scale network model of a Berea sandstone to predict relative permeability and capillary pressure hysteresis. We successfully predict experimentally measured relative permeability data for the water-wet case, and demonstrate that the model captures experime...

Blocking the already swept high permeable zone with a biodegradable polymer gel is expected to be a more effective and innovative sweep efficiency improvement (SEI) method. This is because it has no risk of formation damage, and it is expected to show additional oil recovery if the microbes have a MEOR effect. In this study, in order to confirm the effect of this blocking on the SEI, a waterflo...

Strong foam can be generated in porous media containing oil, resulting in incremental oil recovery; however, oil recovery factor is restricted. A large fraction of oil recovered by foam flooding forms an oil-in-water emulsion, so that costly methods may need to be used to separate the oil. Moreover, strong foam could create a large pressure gradient, which may cause fractures in the reservoir. ...

The fluid distribution as a function of height in transition zones is often very complex. This may be due to movement of water-oil contact, tilting of the reservoir at some point in time, leak of fluid out of the reservoir zone or complex inflow during secondary migration. The resultant fluid distribution seen in saturation logs may be difficult to model. In this paper we address the changes in...

Gas injection into carbonate formations is one of the most important activities to protect oil reserves that can guarantee a steady production. On-time injection of enough gas can result in the recovery of billions barrels of oil. In addition, it can preserve a huge amount of gas for the next generations. If the reservoir depth is shallow, or the reservoir fluid has a little amount of intermedi...

Primary oil recovery methods in Saskatchewan’s heavy oil basin extract 5 to 10% of the available resource with the vast majority left in the ground and recoverable only through Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods. Traditional EOR generates steam in surface facilities and injects it underground to mobilize the oil for production with considerable energy losses inherent in the process. R.I.I. Nor...