ARMA 15-438

Screening of the EOR Potential of a Wolfcamp

Shale Oil Reservoir
Sheng, J.J.1, Cook, T.2, Barnes, W.2, Mody, F.2, Watson, M.1, Porter, M.3, Viswanathan, H.3
1 Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA
2 Apache Corporation, Houston, TX, USA
3 Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

Copyright 2015 ARMA, American Rock Mechanics Association

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 49th US Rock Mechanics / Geomechanics Symposium held in San Francisco, CA, USA, 28 June-
1 July 2015.
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ABSTRACT
The current technique to produce shale oil is through primary depletion using horizontal wells with multiple transverse fractures. The
oil recovery in oil-bearing shale reservoirs may be less than 10%, which leaves a large percentage of the oil unrecoverable without
enhanced oil recovery methods. However, there is no EOR method tested or implemented in shale oil reservoirs. Before testing an
EOR method, feasible methods need to be screened.

In this paper a screen study was first conducted to analyze the feasibility of every EOR method for a Wolfcamp shale oil reservoir.
Actual reservoir and fluid data, and field operational parameters were used. The study shows that water injection and gas injection
are most feasible EOR methods. After that, a detailed simulation study was carried out to evaluate the potentials of water and gas
injection. The model was calibrated with the actual reservoir performance data. Waterflooding, cyclic water injection, gas flooding
and cyclic gas injection were evaluated. The results show that cyclic gas injection provides the highest EOR potential for this
reservoir. Simulation results indicate that the oil recovery factor can be increased more than one time by gas injection. This study
provides a justification for a possible field implementation in the shale reservoir. It also provides a guide for the EOR screening in
shale oil reservoirs.

oil reservoir. Actual reservoir and fluid data, and field

1. INTRODUCTION
Unconventional shale reservoirs are generally produced
by stimulation techniques. A horizontal well with
multiple transverse fractures has proven to be an
effective technique for shale gas and shale oil
production. However, shale oil production faces more
challenges compared with shale gas production. Even
applying multi-stage hydraulic fracturing techniques, the
final oil recovery factors using existing methods are only
a few percent. Oil rate and reservoir pressure drop very
quickly. Because most of oil remains unrecoverable even
using the expensive horizontal well drilling combined
with hydraulic fracturing, seeking the ways to enhance
oil recovery will be the continuous efforts.
Classically, methods to enhance oil recovery (EOR) are
classified into miscible, chemical, thermal and microbial
methods [1]. In this paper, possibilities to use those
methods and the research results are first discussed.
Then a screen study is conducted to analyze the
feasibility of every EOR method for a Wolfcamp shale
operational parameters were used. After that, a detailed
simulation study was carried out to evaluate the
potentials of waterflooding, cyclic water injection, gas
flooding and cyclic gas injection.
2. DISCUSSION OF DIFFERENT EOR
OPTIONS
In this section, the possible application of thermal,
chemical, microbial and gas injection methods is briefly
discussed.
2.1 Thermal recovery
Thermal recovery is generally used to produce viscous
heavy oils. The oil viscosities in shale oil reservoirs are
very low (less than 1 cP). At least the mechanism to
reduce oil viscosity from thermal methods will not be
significant. Apparently, no research work has been done
to explore the thermal recovery method in shale oil
reservoirs.
2.2 Chemical methods In this section, the reservoir and performance are
described by representative or typical data, but not real
Among chemical methods, surfactants have the most
data. From a study point of view, using representative or
obvious potential to enhance oil recovery, as it is well
typical data are better, because the simulation results
known that surfactants can change wettability and
may be more representative, instead of being biased by
enhance water imbibition. The literature on shale oil
specific characters. The structure with the permeability
rocks indicates that they are most likely oil-wet [2-3].
distribution is shown Fig. 1. It has 533 layers in the
This oil-wet condition makes it difficult for the aqueous
vertical direction with each layer of one foot. This
phase to penetrate into the matrix and displace the oil
vertical resolution is same as the geological model. A
out. Surfactants can alter the rock wettability from oil-
typical horizontal is fractured by a continuous 146 ft
wet to water-wet or mixed wet [4]. In terms of enhanced
perforation, with a 46 ft gap between stages. The
oil recovery in shale oil reservoirs, Shuler et al. [5] did
distance between the middles of two stages is 192 ft. If
some surfactant spontaneous imbibition tests. The core
one fracture is assumed in each stage. The fracture
slices (not conventional plugs of a few inches in length)
spacing will be 192 ft. The perforation intervals are 2 ft
they used were 1.5 inches in diameter and ½ inches in
each and spaced out along the length of each stage. A
thickness. Wang et al. [3] also investigated brine
horizontal well is completed with 36 stages of hydraulic
imbibition into the outcrop Pierre shale core slices. Their
fractures. The number of fractures which are generated
thicknesses were 0.65–5 mm. Both of these groups used
in each stage is uncertain. The half-length is also
very thin slices because it is well known that the
uncertain, but surveyed data suggested 400-800 ft.
spontaneous imbibition process is very slow [6]. In
Matrix porosity and permeability are obtained from core
practice, if the fracture density is too low, the recovery
analysis. The average permeability is 220 nD, and the
rate by spontaneous imbibition will be uneconomically
average porosity is 8.24%. The natural fracture porosity
slow, because the imbibition rate is inversely
is 0.22% and the permeability is 2.1 microDarcy. The
proportional to a characteristic length, either linearly, or
spacing of natural fracture is 2.27 ft. The hydraulic
squared [7-12].
fractures are simulated using 1 ft wide and 25 mD
2.3 Microbial methods intrinsic permeability.
Microbial-enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is based on
biological technology to enhance oil recovery in
reservoirs. There are two essential components:
Microbes (indigenous or exogenous) and nutrients (in
situ or ex situ). At the proper conditions, biopolymers
and bio-surfactants are generated [13]. Therefore, the
principles of MEOR are similar to chemical flooding.
No report has been published to use MEOR to enhance
oil recovery from shale reservoirs. Some polymers may Fig. 1 – Simulated reservoir structure with permeability
be generated which block ultra-small pores in shale The type curves of production rates for the reservoir is
reservoirs. generated and extended to a long period. The curves in
2.5 Gas injection the first 100 production months are shown in Fig. 2. This
figure shows that water production rate is higher than oil
Gas injection could be in a gas flooding mode or in a
rate. The water come from the fracturing fluid, not
huff and puff mode. Gas flooding has been widely used
original formation water, most likely. It is not well
to enhance oil recovery in conventional oil reservoirs,
understood how fracturing fluids could not be fully
either in simultaneous injection or in water-alternating-
produced. Modeling production is not matured. And it is
gas (WAG) mode. Huff and puff to enhance oil recovery
not the focus of this paper. Therefore, we only calibrate
in conventional oil reservoirs has been studied by
the model by simulating the relationship between the
numerous researchers through laboratory studies [14-
total reservoir production rate versus bottom hole
17], as well as field tests [18-23]. However, to the best
pressure.
of our knowledge, no gas injection has been reported in
shale oil or shale liquid-rich reservoirs, although some
laboratory tests and simulation studies have been
performed. This paper is to evaluate the oil recovery
potential from waterfooding and gas injection including
huff-n-puff and gas flooding using simulation approach.
3. RESERVOIR AND PERFORMANCE
DESCRIPTION

Fig. 2 – Production rate type curves
4. SET UP OF BASE SIMULATION MODEL
A representative sector of the Wolfcamp formation was
selected for this modeling work. To include such
heterogeneity details, especially in vertical direction, a
model has millions of simulation blocks. Then the
simulation time will be long. To short the simulation
time, a representative pattern with two fractures is
modeled, as shown in Fig. 3. Such a simple model is
justified as follows.
1. Each layer is relatively flat and the permeability is in
the order of nanoDarcy. Therefore, the structural
effect on flow is not significant or important.
2. Detailed distribution of actual hydraulic fractures
and their individual lengths are not known. There is
no need to simulate the whole section including
many hydraulic fractures but each fracture is
described by average fracture properties.
Such approach using a simple pattern of two fractures
was implemented elsewhere [24]. The model consists of
3200 ft x 50 ft x 533 ft, with grid blocks of 32 x 1 x 533.
The wells are in the Y direction and the fractures
(vertical) are oriented in the X direction. The fracture
spacing is 100 ft, assuming two fractures are generated
in each stage. The fracture length used in the final
history-matched model is 400 ft which is in the low side
of the expected range of 400-800 ft. The matrix porosity
and permeability are from the actual data. Other actual
parameters like fracture properties are used in the base
model. The height of hydraulic fractures of 300 ft is used
in the final models. Simulation of hydraulic fractures
follows the Rubin’s approach [25].
Rubin used logarithmically spaced, locally refined grids
with fractures represented by 2.0-ft-wide cells and by
maintaining the same conductivity (kfwf) as that of the
original 0.001-ft-wide fracture. In our model, a fracture
width of 1 ft is used (actually two half fractures with the
fracture cells of 0.5 ft are used in the model).
Fig. 3 – Schematic of simulated area
Using such a model, two vertical wells are located at the
two half-fractures because of flow symmetry. The
production rate of each vertical well is the total flow rate
shown in Fig. 2 divided by the two times of number of
fractures (2x36 in this case), as one well is actually
connected with half fractures. The reservoir production
rate is the sum of water, oil and gas production rates.
The reservoir production rate serves as the history-match
rate to calibrate the base model. In other words, some
uncertain parameters like permeability, fracture length
and spacing etc. are tuned so that the well can produce
the history rate, and the well bottom hole flowing
pressure is 500-1000 psi. The initial reservoir pressure is
3450 psi. The initial reservoir temperature is 150 oF.
The compositional simulator, GEM, developed by CMG
is used. 9 components are used to represent the crude oil
composition in Table 1. In Table 1, Pc, Tc and Vc are
critical pressure, critical temperature and critical volume,
respectively, and MW is molecular weight.
5. HISTORY-MATCHED MODEL
Based on the above description of rock and fluid
properties and reservoir performance in the base model,
a sensitivity study is conducted for different parameters.
At the end, a combination of the following parameters
gives a reasonable bottom-hole pressure.
• Permeability multiplier of 0.4 is used for matrix
and fracture permeabilities in all directions.
 • Hydraulic fracture length is 400 ft. It was
thought that the fracture length should be 400-
800 ft.
• Hydraulic fracture height is 300 ft, although the
formation thickness is about 533 ft.
• Natural fracture spacing is not known. Initially,
2.27 ft is assumed. Later 35 ft is used.
• Because there is suspect that the fluid samples
used to measure PVT properties may not
represent true reservoir fluids, another set of
EOS parameters used by Kurtoglu [26] for the
middle Bakken interval was also tested. It was
found that the difference in EOS parameters
could significantly affect the history-matched
model parameters. Therefore, it is very
important to obtain representative oil and gas
samples and tune EOS parameters by history-
matching laboratory measurements.
6. EVALUATION OF IOR POTENTIAL FROM
DIFFERENT DEVELOPMENT SCENARIOS
Different development scenarios were tested to evaluate
the potential of improved oil recovery. These scenarios
are huff and puff gas injection, continuous gas flooding,
continuous waterflooding and huff and puff water
injection. The gas is dry gas methane. Before the gas or
water injection, the reservoir is put in 5-year primary
depletion. Gas or water injection is continued for another
20 years. The maximum injection pressure is 4450 psi
which is 1000 psi above the initial reservoir pressure.
The minimum flowing pressure during the production
period is 500 psi. The oil recovery from 20 years are
compared in Table 2. It can be seen that gas injection is
better than water injection, huff-n-puff gas injection is
better than gas flooding.
Table 2 - Oil recovery from different development
scenarios (% OOIP)
Primary depletion 3.2
Gas flooding 4.3
Gas huff-n-puff 7.1
Waterflooding 3.5
Water huff-n-puff 4.1
7. CONCLUSIONS
• A simple screening shows that gas injection
is the most feasible method to improve oil
recovery from shale oil reservoirs.
• Gas injection is better than water injection.
• Huff-n-puff gas injection is better than gas
flooding.
8. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The work presented in this paper is supported by the
Department of Energy under Award Number DE-
FE0024311.
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