Reservoir-Engineering-EOR

CERE has a long experience in studies of reservoir characterization and development. The mission is to create crucial background knowledge and develop advanced technologies for hydrocarbon production from petroleum reservoirs. These studies are based on the Centre’s strong background in liquids and gases in porous media. In particular, they may be applied to the different processes in the chemical and biochemical industry and ecology, specifically, to carbon dioxide storage.

Although a large body of our study is focused on the reservoirs in the Danish sector of the North Sea, CERE’s research in this direction has a much wider perspective.

With the growing global energy consumption and declining accessible hydrocarbon resources, future hydrocarbon production must handle challenging situations including improved hydrocarbon production from developed reservoirs at low production rates and high water cuts, development of unconventional resources like shales, heavy oils, and gas hydrates, and production from extreme environments like deeper reservoirs at high pressures and/or high temperatures.

All these have added more complexity to aspects regarding fluids, rocks, and their interactions. Novel and nonstandard approaches based on high level research are needed to answer these challenges. Additional ecological challenges are also of the utmost importance (e.g. produced water management).

In addition, the research in reservoir engineering is also closely related to realization of industrial scale underground CO2 storage for the purpose of CO2 emission control.

The reservoir characterization studies in CERE involve:

• Petroleum fluid characterization with modern experimental facilities and advanced thermodynamic models
• Petroleum fluid behavior in the porous media, especially in tight formations: Adsorption and capillarity effects, diffusion and dispersion.
• Characterization of reservoir rocks and rock-fluid interactions
• Petroleum fluid distribution with depth under gravity, geothermal gradient or other effects

The improved and enhanced oil recovery (IOR and EOR) studies involve:

• “Smart water” EOR through modification of the salinity and ion composition of the injected water
• Miscible and immiscible gas injection
• Influence of the reservoir fines on oil production, e.g., deep bed filtration and injectivity decline under waterflooding
• Advanced reservoir simulation (also under “Simulation and optimization”)
• Produced water management and re-injection

CERE carries out both experimental and modeling studies. Advanced experimental facilities for phase behavior measurements and flow experiments in porous media are available.