Publications

Variety of gases can be used for flooding reservoirs under conditions varying from immiscibility to full miscibility. Also gas flooding has found applications in both secondary and tertiary conditions. The advantage and disadvantage of the different combinations of each of the above will depend on the particular context. Useful work has been done in clarifying the influence of the parameters controlling the efficiency of the different processes.This paper addresses the problem of oil recovery by gas flooding of water flooded reservoirs with particular emphasis on the use of lean hydrocarbon gas. A systematic investigation was carried out to highlight the parameters controlling such processes. The work comprised of laboratory experiments under reservoir conditions and interpretations of these experiments using a fully compositional simulator. Laboratory experiments included both centrifuge tests and core floods under reservoir conditions. The core flood was designed to help determine the 3-phase oil relative permeability at low oil saturations.The investigation confirms that tertiary lean gas injection is capable of accumulating waterflood residual oil. The work also helps identify the roles of gas injection rate, 3-phase relative permeability, phase behaviour and displacement pressure.