Abstract In recent years, the United States (US) has experienced a resurrection in hydrocarbon recovery owing to the extraction of oil and gas from unconventional resources. Due to the ultra-low permeability nature of these reservoirs and their oil-wet characteristics, oil production declines are steep and oil recoveries remain very low (< 12% of OOIP). This challenge endures even with the assistance of hydraulic fracturing advancements and well spacing optimizations. The billions of barrels of remaining oil is a good target for chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies.
In this study, after comprehensive laboratory testing, a series of customized chemical formulations was developed to improve oil recovery under the challenging conditions of the Middle Bakken and Niobrara formations (temperature >110 °C, salinity>220,000 ppm, and hardness>15,000 ppm). To examine the performance of the selected formulation in the field-scale, a single well enhancement trial was carried out. A detailed review of the lab and field data (pre-and post- treatment) is discussed in this study. Oil rate decline analysis and numerical simulations were used to obtain more insight about the true effectiveness of the chemical treatments. The results of this field trial reveal that injecting a proper wettability altering agent can improve oil recovery from shale oil reservoirs by up to 25% of the estimated ultimate recovery (EUR). The results of numerical simulations also show that the additional oil recovered in this field trial cannot be achieved by either well shut-in or straight water injection.
The lessons learned from this study provide practical information to optimize similar field trial designs leading to more profitable projects. The concepts and information here can be also translated to other unconventional basins and gas condensate or wet/dry gas reservoirs.