Paper: Chemical Support for Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery Production Operations

As with all EOR techniques, the injection of carbon dioxide into oil bearing reservoirs causes fundamental changes in the chemical and thermodynamic properties of the reservoir fluids, not only as they exist in the reservoir, but also as they are produced. Additionally, because of the dynamic nature of CO2 flooding, the produced fluids (gas, oil and water) will change continually as various areas are swept and produced. Thus, producing wells, satellites and production batteries will experience constantly changing fluid conditions throughout the life of the project. Although various portions of the production system can approximate equilibrium, change is inevitable. Given these conditions, chemical programs used in production operations must be designed with flexibility in mind. Chemical treatments must accommodate
produced fluids whose tendencies to deposit scale, corrode steel, deposit paraffin and form emulsions are changing. This paper will address changes that must be made to transform traditional production chemical programs into systems that can maintain the efficient production in CO2 enhanced recovery.