Petroleum Engineering Commons^™

A Systematic Design Approach For Bulk Gel Treatments Based On Gel Volume-Concentration Ratio In Field Projects, Munqith Aldhaheri, Mingzhen Wei, Baojun Bai

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Controlling excessive water production in mature oil fields has always been a desired objective of the oil and gas industry. This objective calls for planning of more effective water-control gel treatments with optimized designs to obtain more attractive outcomes. Unfortunately, planning such effective treatments remains a dilemma for reservoir engineers due to the lack of methodical design tools in the industry. This paper presents a novel systematic design approach for polyacrylamide-Based bulk gel treatments by classifying their field projects according to the gel volume-concentration ratio (VCR) into three design types. in terms of one another, the approach estimates either the …

Coreflooding Evaluation Of Fiber-Assisted Recrosslinkable Preformed Particle Gel Using An Open Fracture Model, Shuda Zhao, Ali Al Brahim, Junchen Liu, Baojun Bai, Thomas P. Schuman

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Recrosslinkable Preformed Particle Gels (RPPGs) Have Been Used to Treat the Problem of Void Space Conduits (VSC) and repair the "Short-Circuited" Waterflood in Alaska's West Sak Field. Field Results Showed a 23% Increase in Success Rates over Typical Preformed Particle Gel (PPG) Treatments. in This Paper, We Evaluated Whether Adding Fiber into RPPGs Can Increase the RPPG Plugging Efficiency and Thus Further Improve the Success Rate. We Designed Open Fracture Models to Represent vs.C and Investigated the Effect of Swelling Ratio (SR), Fracture Size, and Fiber Concentration on Gel Injection Pressure, Water Breakthrough Pressure, and Permeability Reduction. Results Show that …

Lysine Crosslinked Polyacrylamide─A Novel Green Polymer Gel For Preferential Flow Control, Tao Song, Baojun Bai, Yugandhara Eriyagama, Thomas P. Schuman

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Acrylamide-based polymer gels have been applied to control the preferential flow in the subsurface for decades. However, some commonly used crosslinkers, such as Cr (III) and phenol-formaldehyde, are highly toxic and are being phased out because of stringent environmental regulations. This work uses l-lysine as the green crosslinker to produce acrylamide-based polymer gels. This article systematically studied the effect of lysine and polymer concentration, salinity, pH, and temperature on gelation behavior and thermal stability. Besides, the gelation mechanism and crosslinking density were elucidated in this work. A high-permeability sandstone core was used to test the plugging efficiency of this novel …

Comparative Analysis Of Artificial Intelligence And Numerical Reservoir Simulation In Marcellus Shale Wells, Arya Maher Sattari

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation addresses the limitations of conventional numerical reservoir simulation techniques in the context of unconventional shale plays and proposes the use of data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) models as a promising alternative. Traditional methods, while providing valuable insights, often rely on simplifying assumptions and are constrained by time, resources, and data quality. The research leverages AI models to handle the complexities of shale behavior more effectively, facilitating accurate predictions and optimizations with less resource expenditure.

Two specific methodologies are investigated for this purpose: traditional numerical reservoir simulations using Computer Modelling Group's GEM reservoir simulation software, and an AI-based Shale Analytics …

The Effect Of Different Fracturing Fluids On The Productivity Of Multi-Staged Fractured Marcellus Shale Horizontal Wells, Vida Gyaubea Matey-Korley

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

While hydraulic fracturing has undeniably improved the production from oil and gas reservoirs, this technology is not without limitations. The primary hurdles lie in the areas of proppant transport, fluid rheology, and stress management. Despite the extensive research conducted in this domain, there remains a considerable amount of work to be done for comprehensive solutions that account for the complex interactions among fracturing fluid, proppant distribution, and geomechanical conditions. Achieving this will then make room for a holistic and efficient hydraulic fracturing strategy.

This study addresses the above-mentioned problem by examining the impact of fluid type on proppant transport and …

Verification Of Oil Recovery Mechanism Through Alteration Of Relative Permeability Curve And Analytical Measurements, Tina Tharn

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

In the petroleum production industry, there are several methods that can be utilized to increase oil recovery. These methods are so-called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). Nowadays, Low Salinity Water Flooding (LSWF) is one of the considerable of those techniques due to its cost and simplicity. However, understanding its main oil recovery mechanism is still limited. Therefore, the investigation of oil mechanism provided by LSWF would help refine its application to oilfields. In this study, the Johnson–Bossler–Naumann (JBN) approach is employed to examine relative permeability curves during LSWF in different rock formations including clean sandstone (SS), shaly-sandstone (SHS), and dolostone (DL). …

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence And Geomechanical Data For Accurate Shear Stress Prediction In Co2 Sequestration Within Saline Aquifers (Smart Proxy Modeling), Munirah Alawadh

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research builds upon the success of a previous project that used a Smart Proxy Model (SPM) to predict pressure and saturation in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) operations into saline aquifers. The Smart Proxy Model is a data-driven machine learning model that can replicate the output of a sophisticated numerical simulation model for each time step in a short amount of time, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and large volumes of subsurface data. This study aims to develop the Smart Proxy Model further by incorporating geomechanical datadriven techniques to predict shear stress by using a neural network, specifically through supervised …

Oil Recovery Performance And Asphaltene Deposition Evaluation Of Miscible And Immiscible Carbon Dioxide Or Nitrogen Huff-N-Puff Processes In Shale Reservoirs, Mukhtar Elturki, Abdulmohsin Imqam, Shari Dunn-Norman, Hasan Shaglouf, Ahmed Kablan

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The utilization of gas enhanced oil recovery to extract oil from unconventional reservoirs has become a widely discussed topic, as it has proven to be effective in significantly boosting oil recovery rates. Among various enhanced oil recovery methods, Gas Enhanced Oil Recovery (GEOR) is a frequently implemented approach. However, a significant challenge encountered during the process of injecting Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) or Nitrogen (N₂) to displace oil is the occurrence of asphaltene precipitation and deposition, which can impede production. This work is an experimental study to examine the effects of cyclic (huff-n-puff) CO₂ or N …

The Success Story Of First Ever Polymer Flood Field Pilot To Enhance The Recovery Of Heavy Oils On Alaska's North Slope, Abhijit Dandekar, Baojun Bai, John Barnes, Dave Cercone, Reid Edwards, Samson Ning, Randy Seright, Brent Sheets, Dongmei Wang, Yin Zhang

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The primary goal of the first ever polymer flood field pilot at Milne Point is to validate the use of polymers for heavy oil Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) on Alaska North Slope (ANS). The specific objectives are systematic evaluation of advanced technology that integrates polymer flooding, low salinity water flooding, horizontal wells, and numerical simulation based on polymer flood performance data. Accordingly, under the co-sponsorship of the US Department of Energy and Hilcorp Alaska LLC the first ever polymer field pilot commenced on August 28, 2018 in the Schrader Bluff heavy oil reservoir at the Milne Point Unit (MPU) on …

Descriptive Systematics Of Upper Palaeocene–Lower Eocene Pollen And Spores From The Northern Niger Delta, South-Eastern Nigeria, Luke Mander, Carlos Jaramillo, Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Fossil pollen and spores are a vital source of information on the geological history of tropical vegetation including reconstructions of vegetation diversity and composition. However, such work relies on a sound taxonomic framework, and this is challenging to achieve because of the large number of pollen and spore morphotypes that are encountered in palynological preparations from tropical sediments. In tropical West Africa, for example, extensive taxonomic work on Cretaceous–Paleogene pollen and spores was undertaken in the later part of the twentieth century, but more recent palynological work has focused on stratigraphy and basin evolution, and there is a need for …

Experimental Study: Investigating The Anions And Cations' Effects On The Elasticity Of The Anionic And Cationic High Viscosity Friction Reducers, Xiaojing Ge, Ghith Biheri, Abdulmohsin Imqam, Baojun Bai, Yuwei Zhang

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

High viscosity friction reducers (HVFRs) are widely used as friction-reducing agents and proppant carriers during hydraulic fracturing. The reuse of produced water has gained popularity due to environmental and economic benefits. Currently, the field's most commonly used friction reducers are anionic and cationic HVFRs. Anionic HVFRs are typically pumped with freshwater, while cationic HVFRs are used with high Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) produced water. Cationic friction reducers are believed to have better TDS tolerance, friction reduction performance, and proppant transport capabilities compared to anionic friction reducers under high TDS conditions due to their superior viscoelastic properties. In addition, the impact …

Kinetic Experimental And Modeling Evaluations Of Asphaltene Morphology And Growth Rate Under Varying Temperature And Brine Conditions, Kwamena Ato Quainoo, Abdulmohsin Imqam, Cornelius Borecho Bavoh

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The utilization of predictive mechanisms to resolve asphaltene precipitation during oil production is a cleaner and less expensive means than the mechanical/chemical remediation techniques currently employed. Existing models lack predictive success due to opposing views on temperature-asphaltene precipitation interactions. In this study, the effect of varying temperatures (40, 50, 60, 70 80 and 90 °C) and brine concentrations (0 – 5 wt.%) on the long-time kinetics of asphaltene precipitations was evaluated. A series of experiments were conducted using the filtration technique and the confocal microscopy to study asphaltene precipitation on a model oil system consisting of asphaltenes, a precipitant, and …

Risk As A Process: A History Informed Hazard Planning Approach Applied To The 2018 Post-Fire Debris Flows, Montecito, California, Anna Serra-Llobet, John Radke, G. Mathias Kondolf, Larry Gurrola, J. David Rogers, Sarah Lindbergh, Johnny Douvinet

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Historical information about floods is not commonly used in the US to inform land use planning decisions. Rather, the current approach to managing floods is based on static maps derived from computer simulations of the area inundated by floods of specified return intervals. These maps provide some information about flood hazard, but they do not reflect the underlying processes involved in creating a flood disaster, which typically include increased exposure due to building on flood-prone land, nor do they account for the greater hazard resulting from wildfire. We developed and applied an approach to analyze how exposure has evolved in …

Magnetic Inversion Approach For Modeling Data Acquired Across Faults: Various Environmental Cases Studies, Khalid S. Essa, Eid R. Abo-Ezz, Neil Lennart Anderson, Omar A. Gomaa, Mahmoud Elhussein

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An effective extension to the particle swarm optimizer scheme has been developed to visualize and modelize robustly magnetic data acquired across vertical or dipping faults. This method can be applied to magnetic data sets that support various investigations, including mining, fault hazards assessment, and hydrocarbon exploration. The inversion algorithm is established depending on the second horizontal derivative technique and the particle swarm optimizer algorithm and was utilized for multi-source models. Herein, the inversion method is applied to three synthetic models (a dipping fault model contaminated without and with different Gaussian noises levels, a dipping fault model affected by regional anomaly, …

Impact Of Hvfr Loading Concentrations On Its Viscoelastic Properties And Proppant Transport Performance, Ghith Biheri, Shari Dunn Norman, Abdulmohsin Imqam

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In unconventional reservoirs, increasing the low formation conductivities through hydraulic fracturing may substantially increase oil production from wells. This work of improving the fracture conductivity could be conducted by distributing and transporting proppant within the fracture lengths using high fracture fluid concentrations. This research focused on three areas. First, it assessed the fluid rheology including the viscosity and elasticity of a high viscosity friction reducer (HVFR) and linear guar using deionized (DI) water at different fluid concentrations (i.e., 2, 4, and 8 gpt for the HVFR and 15, 25, and 35 ppt for linear guar), and measured the impact of …

Comparative Study Of Proppant Transport In The Vertical Fracture For High Viscosity Friction Reducers And Slickwater Fracturing With High-Tds Marcellus Shale Formation Water, Xiaojing Ge, Abdulmohsin Imqam, Baojun Bai

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

High viscosity friction reducers (HVFRs) have been gaining more attention and increasing in use as proppant carriers. Reusing of produced water has also been driven by both environmental and economic benefits. However, high total dissolved solids (TDS) of produced water and high reservoir temperature significantly decrease the viscoelastic properties of HVFRs even for the cationic ones, which further reduce their proppant transport capabilities. Increasing loadings of HVFRs also has very limited effects on improving their proppant transport performances under high-TDS and high-Temperature conditions. The ultimate objective of this experimental study is to investigate the injection rate effects on the proppant …

Analysis Of Plastic Pyrolysis Oil Separation Using Chemcad, Brian Berish, Juliana Mcgaffic

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Excessive plastic waste is a massive global issue. Plastic pyrolysis is a process of melting plastic in the absence of oxygen to create an wax-oil type substance called pyrolysis oil. This project will use a ChemCAD simulation to perform a distillation of a predetermined plastic pyrolysis oil into usable products. Heat integration will be used to construct a heat exchanger network and estimate utility usage. Sizing and costing of all equipment will be calculated and an overall cost analysis of the completed simulation will be performed to determine the economic viability of plant construction. Market research for potential products will …

Data Analytics Of Wettability Alteration With Surfactants In Carbonate Reservoirs, Ya Yao

Doctoral Dissertations

"Wettability alteration with surfactants has been widely applied to improve oil recovery in carbonate reservoirs. An effective surfactant huff-puff application design requires comprehensive guidelines about where, how, and when this method could be applied. Besides, traditional methods to design an effective application and optimize surfactant performance are dependent on extensive experiments and are time-consuming. This study is to assist in the design of surfactant huff-puff via statistical methods and machine learning techniques.

In this study, a dataset including 402 effective surfactant imbibition tests is established by collecting information from nearly 50 publications. The dataset provides a foundation for further data …

Analyzing Spatio-Temporal Mechanisms Of Land Subsidence In The Parowan Valley, Utah, Usa, Jiawei Li, Ryan G. Smith, Katherine R. Grote

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Parowan Valley, Utah (USA), is an agricultural region experiencing rapid subsidence due to extensive groundwater extraction from aquifers with a significant portion of fine-grained sediments. To analyze the subsidence spatio-temporally, time-series Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) of 155 Sentinel-1 C-band scenes were processed. These data showed approximately 30 cm of ground subsidence in Parowan Valley from 2014 to 2020. Because of the high temporal sampling rate of the Sentinel-1 satellite (12-day cycle), it is possible to determine the seasonal changes of ground deformation and relate this to groundwater extraction. To better understand the relationship between ground deformation and groundwater extraction …

Microcrystalline Dolomite In A Middle Permian Volcanic Lake: Insights On Primary Dolomite Formation In A Non-Evaporitic Environment, Xin Jiao, Yi Qun Liu, Wan Yang, Hong Li, Zi Yuan Meng, Min Ru Zhao, Zhe Xuan Li

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Lacustrine dolomite nucleation commonly occurs in modern and Neogene evaporitic alkaline lakes. As a result, ancient lacustrine microcrystalline dolomite has been conventionally interpreted to be formed in evaporitic environments. This study, however, suggests a non-evaporitic origin of dolomite precipitated in a volcanic–hydrothermal lake, where hydrothermal and volcanic processes interacted. The dolomite occurs in lacustrine fine-grained sedimentary rocks in the middle Permian Lucaogou Formation in the Santanghu intracontinental rift basin, north-west China. Dolostones are composed mainly of nano-sized to micron-sized dolomite with a euhedral to subhedral shape and a low degree of cation ordering, and are interlaminated and intercalated with tuffaceous …