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Current Research and
Challenges Pertaining to CO
2

Flooding and Sequestration




Dandina N. Rao and Richard G. Hughes, Craft and Hawkins Department of
Petroleum Engineering, Louisiana State University










CO
2
Enhanced Oil
Recovery: Background
With 50% to 65% of the original oil
in place (OOIP) remaining in many
reservoirs after primary and
secondary recovery, more operators and
governments are considering the use of
enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes as
an opportunity whose time has come.
Additionally, in the face of global
warming, the prospect of CO
2

sequestration has arisen with the potential of
sequestering large quantities of CO
2

in depleted oil fields as a means of preventing
its release into the atmosphere.
The concept of injecting gas into a
formation to stimulate recovery of
residual oil is not new. Successful
laboratory gas-injection experiments
generated a lot of optimism in the 1950s, but
by the 1970s field experiments yielded only
moderate recoveries of 5% to 10% of the
remaining OOIP. Viscous fingering, solvent
channeling, and reservoir heterogeneity were
found to be the main culprits for the
disappointing field performance. Early efforts
were directed at developing methods to
improve the injected gass mobility and
volumetric sweep efficiency, and included the
water-alternating-gas (WAG) process, using
foaming agents










and polymers. Much of these research
efforts continue today in universities and
other research laboratories. One concern,
however, is that the research favors
modeling work rather than experimental
development of new concepts and
processes.
In a recent study for the US Department
of Energy (DOE), Advanced Resources
International identified four advanced CO
2

EOR technologies:
Higher pore volume of CO
2
injection
Vertical gravity stable gas injection
with horizontal wells for production
Miscibility development
Effective mobility control in
horizontal floods
This article discusses the gas-assisted
gravity drainage (GAGD) technology being
developed at Louisiana State University with
the support of a DOE research grant.


Gas-Assisted Gravity Drainage
The GAGD process is shown schematically in
Fig. 1. CO
2
injected in vertical wells
accumulates at the top of the pay zone and
displaces oil, which drains to a horizontal
producer straddling several injection wells. As
injection continues,
the CO
2
chamber grows downward and
sideways, resulting in larger portions










of the reservoir being swept without any
increase in water saturation in the reservoir.
This maximizes the volumetric
sweep efficiency. The gravity segregation of
CO
2
also helps in delaying, or even
eliminating, CO
2
breakthrough to the
producer as well as preventing the gas phase
from competing for flow with oil.
Additionally, keeping the pressure above
the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP)
maximizes the recovery efficiency. This keeps
the interfacial tension between the oil and the
injected CO
2
low, which in turn results in
large capillary numbers and low residual oil
saturations in the swept region. If the
formation is water-wet, water is likely

to be held back in the rock pores by capillary
pressure while oil will be preferentially
displaced by CO
2
. If the formation is oil-wet,
continuous films of oil will help create
drainage paths for the oil to flow to the
horizontal producer.
The GAGD process has the additional
advantage of increased oil saturation and
consequently improved oil relative
permeability near the producing wellbore.

The process makes use of existing vertical
wells in the field for CO
2
injection and calls for
drilling a long horizontal well for producing
the draining oil. The


Vol. 7 // No. 2 // 2011 17
Produced

Fluids
CO
2
CO
2





Vertical Injectors


UNDERBURDEN





Gas Invaded Zone




Horizontal Producer


UNDERBURDEN

Fig. 1Concept of the New Gas-Assisted Gravity Drainage EOR Process (Rao et al., 2004).



drilling costs of horizontal wells have been
significantly reduced in recent years due to
technology advances. Our ongoing
experimental studies of GAGD have shown
recoveries in the range
of 73% to 85% remaining OOIP in its
secondary immiscible mode and near
complete recoveries in miscible modes. The
mechanisms of displacement, gravity
drainage, and film flow combine to yield such
high recoveries even in immiscible gas
injection experiments. This opens up a vast
arena for further research and practical
applications on the use of flue gases for
immiscible GAGD EOR applications without
having to separate the CO
2
, which constitutes
about 75% of the cost. The CO
2
GAGD
process is being piloted in a Louisiana field
and the results are awaited.


CO
2
Sequestration
Another research area often affiliated with CO
2

EOR is carbon capture and storage (CCS). The
idea behind CCS is that human-generated
(anthropogenic) greenhouse gases are
separated and captured from concentrated
sources such as power plants, refineries,
chemical plants, or cement plants. These gases
are then injected into the subsurface in active
or abandoned oil and gas reservoirs, deep



underground coal seams, certain volcanic
formations, or deep saline aquifers.
The cost of separating and
capturing the greenhouse gases as
well as of the assessment and
assignment of liability for the long-term




The cost of separating and
capturing the greenhouse
gases as well as of the
assessment and assignment of
liability for the long-term
integrity of sequestration sites
are the primary factors
limiting widespread
implementation of CCS.




integrity of sequestration sites are the
primary factors limiting widespread
implementation of CCS. However, there are
active areas of research associated with
technologies more aligned with oil- and gas-
related topics. Chief among these
technologies are monitoring the fate of
injected CO
2
, evaluating caprock and
wellbore integrity, understanding



sequestration storage mechanisms, and
characterizing storage formation
parameters with limited data.
The primary difference between using
CO
2
for enhanced oil recovery and for
sequestration is that while EOR processes
seek to utilize the CO
2
efficiently, there is
no requirement
to ensure that the CO
2
remains permanently
underground. Ensuring wellbore integrity at the
sequestration site relies on understanding and
extending oilfield technologies of well
construction, cement chemistry, and cement
evaluation. Monitoring the fate of the injected
CO
2
also relies on oil- and gas-related
geophysical measurements. For sequestration,
the site may undergo depletion followed by
repressurization. Since the caprock ensures the
storage capability of the site, whether the
depletion or pressurization of the formation
breaches the integrity of the caprock needs to
be evaluated. Modeling of the sequestration
storage mechanisms of adsorption, solubility
trapping, capillary trapping, and mineralization
requires both adequate models for each
mechanism and laboratory measurements to
calibrate the models. The dominant mechanism
for storage depends on pore structure,
mineralogy, and rock and fluid


18


properties. Formation characterization for
sequestration differs only slightly from oilfield
exploration well characterization in that
formation mineralogy must be modeled in
addition to the more traditional rock and fluid
properties.
In the US, funding for CO
2
sequestration
research is primarily through the Regional
Partnership program at the DOE. The seven
Regional Partnerships have field projects
designed to demonstrate full-scale
implementation of CCS in each of the
formation types. Budgets for these projects are
dominated by the cost of implementation and
monitoring. Additional funding is available
through industry and through other
governmental sources such as

the National Science Foundation or the US
Environmental Protection Agency.
University researchers are also strong local
resources for public outreach and education
related to greenhouse gas generation and
storage.


but any oil- and gas-related research. When oil
prices drop, research becomes a bad word
among all funding sources. This needs to
change. Second, university research should
continue to focus on
the free flow of knowledge without
boundaries, open-minded examination of new
concepts and ideas, and independent pursuits
of new realms of science.
Third, professional journals should publish
new material even in the face of
controversyacademic careers depend on
publications. Fourth, the industry that
benefits from these resources should actively
participate in university research for it to be
relevant. Operators should be more open to
implement pilots to try out new ideas,
irrespective of their origin, be it the industrial
labs or academia. TWA

References
Christianson et. al., SPE 71203, 1998
Rao et al., SPE 89357, 2004
Tech 101... Continued from page 14

Ducklow, H.W., Baker, K., and Martinson,
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Cycles. II. The 100,000-Year Cycle.
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Petit, J.R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barnola, J.M.,
Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappelaz, J. et al. 1999.
Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past
420,000 Years From the Vostok Ice Core
Antarctica. Nature 399 (3 June): 429436.
Randel, W.J., and F. Wu. 1999. Cooling
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TAAA>2.0.CO;2

J oseph Levy is a postdoctoral permafrost
geologist at Portland State
Challenges in Academia
The foremost challenge is dwindling research
funding, not just for gas flooding



Dandina N. Rao is Emmett Wells distinguished professor in the Craft
and Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering at Louisiana State
University (LSU). He holds a BTech with Distinction from India, an MS
from the University of Saskatchewan, and a PhD from the University of
Calgary. After 17 years of research and development work (Shell
Canada, Petroleum Recovery Institute, and BDM Petroleum
Technologies), he came to LSU in January1999. His experimental
research interests include
reservoir condition rock-fluids interactions and thermal and nonthermal EOR.



Richard G. Hughes is a professional-in-residence for the Craft and
Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering at LSU. He earned a BS
in petroleum engineering from New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology and held various production, reservoir, and information
technology positions with Tenneco Oil, Dwights Energy Data, and
Amerada Hess. He then obtained his MS and PhD in petroleum
engineering from Stanford University before joining the University of
Oklahoma as an assistant professor. His
research interests include utilizing CO
2
for EOR and carbon sequestration, modeling of
multiphase flow in porous media and rock fractures, reservoir surveillance, production data
analysis, and unconventional field reservoir engineering.

University in Portland, Oregon.





















SPE ANNUAL TECHNICAL
CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION
30 OCTOBER2 NOVEMBER 2011
DENVER, COLORADO, USA
www.spe.org/atce

Society of Petroleum Engineers

Vol. 7 // No. 2 // 2011 19

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