Numerical Simulation of Enhanced Oil Recovery using a Gum Arabic Polymer

Abstract

Oil reserves are now located in hard-to-reach locations. This, combined with low oil prices, makes drilling for new reserves very expensive and risky. Enhanced oil recovery, which increases the amount of oil that can be recovered from a reservoir, should therefore be considered. This work uses numerical simulation to determine the suitability of gum arabic as a polymer for EOR operations. This was done by matching core-flooding experiments using Eclipse. Simulation gave a waterflooding oil recovery match of 53 % compared to the experimental recovery of 55 % while alkali-surfactant- polymer flooding gave an oil recovery match of 80.53 % compared to the experimental recovery of 82 %. Extrapolating from core to field simulation, the ASP slug formulated increased total field oil production by increasing recovery from 62.48 %, at the end of the waterflooding, to 85.8 %. This demonstrates the potential of gum arabic for EOR operations.