Reservoir Description & Simulation Department: Enhancing Carbon Capture Utilization and Sequestration Efficiency Through Streamline Simulation: A Novel Approach for Optimizing CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract Carbon Capture Utilization and Sequestration (CCUS) in oil reservoirs is an important technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating climate change. However, the complex interactions between CO2, hydrocarbon fluid, and reservoir rock in heterogeneous reservoirs pose significant challenges to efficient CO2 sequestration and oil production. This study presents a novel application of streamline simulation for CO2 WAG EOR (Carbon Dioxide Water Alternating Gas Enhanced Oil Recovery), leveraging its ability to efficiently model complex fluid flow and transport phenomena in heterogeneous reservoirs. Streamline simulation provides a powerful and efficient approach for modeling CO2 WAG EOR and optimizing injection strategies by predicting where the gas is being injected and stored. The approach involves a detailed characterization of the reservoir's geological and petrophysical properties, followed by streamline simulation to simulate CO2 and water injection and flow in the reservoir. The simulation model is then used to optimize CO2 injection strategies. The results guide WAG injection schedule to achieve highest sequestration and recovery efficiencies. The results demonstrate that streamline simulation can reliably predict CO2 and water flow paths, breakthrough times, and production profiles, while also provide valuable insights into the underlying physics of CO2 WAG EOR. The study also identifies key factors controlling CO2 flow and transport in heterogeneous reservoirs, including rock properties, fluid properties, rock-fluid interaction and injection strategies. Streamline simulation provides an insight on enhancing oil sweep efficiency in CO2 WAG EOR projects as well as improving sequestration efficiency in CCUS projects. In addition, the results have significant implications for the development of effective CO2 injection technologies. It can be used to improve the design and long-term operations of CCUS and CO2 WAG EOR projects. Thus, it is recommended to run streamline simulation alongside conventional simulation in CCUS and CO2 WAG EOR projects to provide better valuable insights that predicts gas flow paths in the reservoir. The business impact of this study is substantial, as it optimizes CO2 injection techniques in both CO2 WAG EOR and CCUS projects.