Emad W. Al-Shalabi

Mysteries behind the Low Salinity Water Injection Technique

Low salinity water injection (LSWI) is gaining popularity as an improved oil recovery technique in both secondary and tertiary injection modes. The objective of this paper is to investigate the main mechanisms behind the LSWI effect on oil recovery from carbonates through history-matching of a recently published coreflood. This paper includes a description of the seawater cycle match and two proposed methods to history-match the LSWI cycles using the UTCHEM simulator. The sensitivity of residual oil saturation, capillary pressure curve, and relative permeability parameters (endpoints and Corey’s exponents) on LSWI is evaluated in this work. Results showed that wettability alteration is still believed to be the main contributor to the LSWI effect on oil recovery in carbonates through successfully history matching both oil recovery and pressure drop data. Moreover, tuning residual oil saturation and relative permeability parameters including endpoints and exponents is essential for a good data match. Also, the incremental oil recovery obtained by LSWI is mainly controlled by oil relative permeability parameters rather than water relative permeability parameters. The findings of this paper help to gain more insight into this uncertain IOR technique and propose a mechanistic model for oil recovery predictions.

Numerical Simulation of the LSWI Effect on Hydrocarbon Recovery From Carbonate Rocks

Wettability alteration mechanism is still believed to be the main contributor to low salinity water injection (LSWI) effect on oil recovery from carbonate rocks. The authors investigated the main mechanism and contributor to the LSWI effect on oil recovery from carbonate rocks through history matching recently published corefloods using the UTCHEM simulator. The history match results suggest that wettability alteration has negligible effect on water relative permeability, which could be related to the double electric layer expansion mechanism. This paper provides a basis to develop a LSWI model to predict oil recovery from carbonate rocks.

Simulation of Wettability Alteration by Low-Salinity Water Injection in Waterflooded Carbonate Cores

Low-salinity water injection is an emerging improved oil recovery technique due to its simplicity compared to other water based improved oil recovery methods. In this study, the wettability alteration option in the authors’ in-house simulator is used to history match and provide some insights in different seawater dilution cycles based on recently published corefloods. Two newly proposed methodologies to model dilution cycles are employed. The authors successfully modeled the experiments enhancing the wettability alteration model in the simulator using two different scaling factors. The study also revealed that the process is more sensitive to oil relative permeability compared to that of the water phase. A linear interpolation model for residual oil saturation (Sor) was proposed.