Enhancing oil recovery in heterogeneous reservoirs with CO2 flooding
Nurlan Alakparov
https://doi.org/10.65294/gpogc.2026.28
This research explores the key challenges associated with CO₂-enhanced oil recovery (EOR), emphasizing the influence of fine-scale reservoir characteristics, viscous and interfacial dynamics, and dispersion effects driven by concentration gradients. The focus is on understanding how these microscale parameters affect oil extraction efficiency during CO₂ injection. A series of simulation models reflecting different heterogeneity configurations was created and tested under varying pressure conditions, both above and below the Minimum Miscibility Pressure (MMP). A basic two-dimensional reservoir model was constructed as a compositional oil simulation using Eclipse 300. The grid comprises 100 cells along the x-axis and 20 cells along the z-axis, totaling 2000 cells. To replicate injection and production processes, two vertical wells were positioned at opposite ends of the model, fully penetrating the z-direction. This setup enables CO2 to displace oil effectively from the injection well toward the production well.