Secondary

recorvery in
Dulang Field
Overview of secondary recovery
 According to the US Department of Energy, utilizing secondary
methods of production can leave up to 75% of the oil in the well
 Employs water and gas injection
 Waterflooding and gas injection during the secondary recovery
method are used to push the oil through the well
 Displacing the oil and driving it to the surface
 A well planned oil field can go a long way toward the reliability
and overall cost effectiveness of a water/CO2 gasflooding project.
Once primary and secondary production declines, will be used as
injection wells.
 Injection wells use water/CO2 gas to force the remaining oil
reserves toward the extremities of the oil field
 Increasing the viscosity of the water, allowing for drillers to gain
‘control’ over where the water flows. This allows for the
introduction of water/CO2 gas into areas of the reservoir in which
it naturally wouldn’t flow
 By forcing water/CO2 gas into the crevices around an oil reserve,
oil can be ‘moved’ toward the production zone
 Oil reservoirs suitable for secondary recovery projects have
produced for several years. It  takes time to inject sufficient
water/CO2 gas to fill enough of the void spaces to begin to move
the oil.
CO2 Gas Injection
Case Study Project
in Dulang Oilfield
 Dulang area was chosen to research the need for
CO2 injection for oil-producing fields in Malaysia
as a possible form of recovery. Because of the
complete suite of information on this field and the
availability of CO2 source in Dulang and nearby
fields, Dulang was selected as candidate.
 It was located 130 km offshore Terengganu,
Peninsular East Malaysia in the depths of the
water 76m in the South China Sea.
 The work focused on characterizing the
interaction between oil and oil-CO2 carried out
through process activity, vaporization and
displacement experiments.
 For Dulang reservoir in Malaysia, a more decisive
effort is being considered in pilot-scale
implementation of the separator fuel, producing
almost 50% of the CO2 reinjection scheme
CO2 flooding (gasflooding)

 Carbon dioxide flooding may be applied either in miscible, nearly

miscible or immiscible forms
 Carbon dioxide flooding regeneration of oil is very dependent on
the actions of the cycle between carbon dioxide, water and
reservoir oil.
 The action of the CO2-oil cycle strongly influences fluid flow
through changes to mobility ratios, interfacial pressures,
permeability and mass transmission speeds
 The recovery of oil by carbon dioxide flooding is highly
dependent on the phase behaviour between carbon dioxide,
water and reservoir oil.
 Detailed phase behaviour studies can better define the
significant incremental benefits of CO2 displacement even at
immiscible conditions and when significant solution gas is
present.
 Viscosity reduction by CO2 helps to improve the mobility ratio
and hence volumetric conformance, while CO2 swelling reduces
the effective residual oil saturation.
 The CO2-oil phase behaviour strongly affects fluid flow by
altering mobility ratios, interfacial tensions, relative
permeabilities and rates of mass transfer.
Fluid Sample and Phase Behavior
 From the reference journal project, the fluid sampling was used for this study are
surface oil and gas samples. They were taken from a Dulang B well candidate based
on the following criteria:
· Low producing GOR close to initial solution GOR
· Producing naturally
· Low water cut
· Producing from major reservoir/block

 Then, two sets of PVT experiments were carried out on Dulang B samples
· The routine PVT analysis on the original crude oil
· Specialized PVT measurements involving addition of carbon dioxide gas.

The main objective of the phase behaviour study is to investigate the fluid-fluid
interaction between oil and CO2 (swelling, viscosity, saturation pressure).
Swelling Factor
 In order to increase the volume of a crude oil when saturated with
CO2, the swelling factor(Sf) was calculated.
 This factor shows how much the original oil will swell in the presence
of CO2. Change in the original oil volume will also result in change of
the oil density.
 Sf = Volume of the oil phase of the mixture at the given pressure
Volume at saturation pressure of original crude
 The swelling is important for two reasons:
· The residual oil left in the reservoir after flooding is inversely
proportional to the swelling factor, i.e. the greater the swelling, the less
stock tank oil is left behind in the reservoir
· Swollen oil droplets will force water out of the pore spaces, creating a
drainage process for water-wet system. Drainage oil relative permeability
curves are higher than their imbibition counterparts, creating a more
favourable oil flow environment at any given saturation pressure.
 The result summary of CO2 gas injection in Dulang Oilfield Project
:

• Increasing the CO2 content in the mixture, increases the

saturation pressure.
• Recovery factor increased with increasing injection rate.
• The swelling factor also increases with CO2 content and pressure.
• However, density of the liquid phase at saturation decreases with
increasing CO2 concentration in the mixture.
• Dilution of oil by CO2 could have reduced the viscosity of the
liquid phase much more than any increases due to extraction.
 The optimum continuous injection rate for this case study
reservoir is 30,000 Mscf/d yielding a recovery factor of 49.3%.