Spontaneous Imbibition and Imbibition Oil Recovery in Tight Rocks

• Author / Creator

  Javaheri, Ali

• Advances in the development of unconventional resources have led to a surge in North American oil production. For example, tight oil production has pushed the U.S. crude supply to over 9% of world total production. Therefore, petrophysical characterization of such low-permeability rocks, has become increasingly important for petroleum engineers. Properties such as porosity, permeability, pore throat size, and wettability are of high importance for evaluating production from tight oil formations. This study has two parts. In first part, we measure and analyze spontaneous imbibition of water and oil into five twin core plugs drilled from the cores of a well drilled in the Montney Formation, an unconventional oil and gas play in Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB). We characterize the samples by measuring the mineralogy using XRD (x-ray diffraction), total organic carbon content, porosity, and permeability. In order to quantify wettability of the core plugs, we define two wettability indices for the oil phase based on the slope and equilibrium values of water and oil imbibition curves. We observe that the two indices decrease by increasing neutron porosity and gamma ray parameters measured by wireline logging tools. Our results demonstrate that porosity is a key parameter controlling the fluid uptake of tight rock core samples from the Montney formation. Furthermore, we propose a decoupling scheme for pore-network characterization of core plugs based on their porosity and permeability.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Tight Rocks
  • Spontaneous imbibition
  • Oil Recovery

• Graduation date

  Fall 2017

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R31J97N8C

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.