Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) plays an increasingly important role in the petroleum industry since there are fewer newly discovered oil reserves. After primary recovery and secondary recovery, the oil remaining in the light and medium oil reservoirs is generally in the range of 50~60% of the original oil in place. Among the EOR methods for the light and medium oil reservoirs, miscible displacement by injecting high-pressure gases has been successful to a large extent under favorable conditions. In particular, CO2 injection is considered as the most promising EOR technique in the near future because it not only greatly enhances oil recovery but also considerably reduces greenhouse gas emissions. CO2 EOR has been used as a commercial process for enhancing oil recovery since the 1970's, whereas limited field applications of CO2 storage have been undertaken only recently. Successful CO2 EOR and CO2 storage processes result from continuous monitoring and surveillance on the reservoir performance. Although simultaneous integration of monitoring results and reservoir simulation and modeling represent the best chance for success, how to accomplish this task remains a challenging issue for a CO2 EOR and CO2 storage process. In addition, optimization of both CO2 EOR and CO2 storage processes differs significantly from current CO2 injection practices. The objective of this proposed research project is to maximize both oil recovery and CO2 storage in a CO2 injection process by optimizing the displacement efficiency under uncertainty. This research project will not only provide direct technical support for implementing CO2 EOR and storage in the oil and gas industry, but also generate new knowledge that will be useful for other EOR processes. Furthermore, the theoretical models developed in this study can be used to couple with various reservoir simulators for achieving general applicability for optimizing displacement efficiency under uncertainty. Therefore, such research achievements can be readily used to guide the practical field design and operations of CO2 EOR and storage processes.