SPE-190412-MS

Super Critical CO2 and Steam Co-Injection Process for Deep Extra-Heavy Oil
Reservoir

Guo Erpeng, Gao Yongrong, Jiang Youwei, and Zhang Yunjun, Research Institute of Petroleum Explortaion &
Development, CNPC; Chen Zhigang, Changqing Oilfield, CNPC; Wei Yao, Development Management Department,
Liaohe Oilfield CNPC

Copyright 2018, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE EOR Conference at Oil and Gas West Asia held in Muscat, Oman, 26-28 March 2018.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
Thermal recovery process is widely adopted in exploitation of heavy oil reservoirs. But for extra-heavy
oil reservoirs with bottom water and depth more than 800m, effective recovery is not achieved with steam
injection. SAGD (Steam assisted Gravity Drainage) process is tested in such reservoirs but showed poor
performance because of high reservoir pressure and bottom water. This paper proposed a new approach
which is utilizing super critical hydrocarbon gas to replace most part of steam during steam injection and
SAGD process for exploitation of such reservoirs.
Calculations of heat distribution along the steam injection tube were carried out. The solubility of
supercritical hydrocarbon gas in heavy oil was tested with PVT apparatus. Also the viscosity reduction
effect of super critical gas is also tested. SAGD simulation with high mole percent of gas injection was
carried out with theoritical model. Different operation strategy including pure steam, supercritical CO2 and
steam co-injection, wet gas and steam co-injection was compared with numerical simulation.
The main theory of this approach is that injected gas can greatly decrease partial pressure of steam hence
reduce the heat loss and drawdown of quality during injection. The results shows that the heat loss can be
decreased by 40% in steam injection tubing. At super critical conditions, solubility of gas in heavy oil is
almost 100m3/m3. Viscosity of heavy oil saturated with gas will be lower than 200mPa.s at 150℃which
is 80% less than that without gas. The viscosity is already low enough for drainage process. High pressure
SAGD experiment shows that temperature decreases gradually from the inner part to the out range of steam
chamber when injected mole percent of gas is 20%. This means the decrease of steam saturation pressure
related to partial pressure of steam because injected gas will take the corresponding pressure in steam
chamber. The recovery process shows high recovery factor which is similar to SAGD process. And steam
oil ratio is 0.8~1.2 which is much lower than any existing pure steam injection SAGD process. Simulation
results shows that during the operation process bottom water will not flux into steam chamber after the
balance between reservoir and bottom water was achieved.
This paper provides an effective approach to exploit the heavy oil reserves with great depth which is
meaningful for reducing the steam consumption and operation cost for oil industry.
2 SPE-190412-MS

Key words: CO2, EOR, thermal recovery, deep heavy oil reservoir, greenhouse gas
Thermal recovery process is widely adopted in exploitation of heavy oil reservoirs. But for extra-heavy
oil reservoirs with bottom water and depth more than 800m, effective recovery is not achieved with steam
injection. SAGD (Steam assisted Gravity Drainage) process is tested in such reservoirs but showed poor
performance because of high reservoir pressure and bottom water. Injection of CO2 (CO2) into oil reservoirs
for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has received considerable attention in recent years. As many fields
undergoing waterflood approach the limit of recovery, 25-50% of the original oil is left behind. Based on
experience with CO2 flooding worldwide, a considerable part of residual and trapped oil can be recovered
with miscible or immiscible CO2 injection under appropriate conditions. For heavy oil recovery, many
aspects on meachanism of CO2 enhancing heavy oil recovery are also disussed by numerous authors. F.
Ravel[1] carried out numerical simulation of CO2-heavy oil interactions in fracturesd medium. He clearly
depicted the respectived influences of various phenomena: oil swelling, stripping, gravity, capillarity.
Hypercritical CO2 extraction and vaporization of light and intermediate hydrocarbon can leads to high
condensate recovery. Tian Shubao[2] et al conducted steam flooding experiments with injection of CO2,
surfactant and steam. He concluded that the viscosity reduction, swelling and IFT reduction of CO2 play
important roles in improving recovery factor of heavy oil reservoirs. A.H. de Zwart[3] et al proposed a new
approach to develop bottom water heavy oil reservoir with thermal recovery methods. They propose an ISC
strategy where an infill producer is drilled close to the oil-water contact so that a significant amount of heat
can be rapidly deployed in the middle and upper sections of the reservoir. Subsequently, the aquifer is used
to sweep the warm oil through the heated zone towards the producers. Alotaibi[4] et al carried out research on
mitigation clay swelling with supercritical CO2 injection. They found that the (001) d-spacing of hydrated
Na-montmorillonite of 18.72 Å decreased by nearly 25% after soaking in supercritical CO2for 24 hours
at 25℃ and 2,000 psi. Siwei Kang[5] et al indicated that oil swelling, viscosity reduction and blow-down
recovery in Supercritical CO2 process is the main mechanism for effectively recovery of heavy oil. Xiaoli
Li[6] and Daoyong Yang carried out phase behavior study of crude oil and CO2 under higher pressure. They
found that the volume of crude saturated with CO2 can increase 18% and the viscosity of Lloydminster oil
can be reduced to 0.15 cp at 319.15K. Seyed Amir Farzaneh[7] et al experimentally assessed the potential of
liquid CO2 injection for enhancing recovery in low temperature heavy oil reservoir. They concluded that
CO2 WAG injection (alternating injection of water and CO2) brought about an ultimate oil recovery of 74
% IOIP which is 30% higher than convetional water flooding.
With the target reservoir with strong bottom water, this paper proposed a new approach utilizing super
critical CO2 and hydrocarbon gas to replace most part of steam during steam injection and SAGD process
for exploitation of such reservoirs.

Reservoir description
H reservoir locates in southwest of M basin. It's a faulted block reservoir with extra heavy oil in it. with
bottom water. The depth of the reservoir is 800m and with strong bottom water. Insitu viscosity of bitumen
is about 8000mPa.s @ 80℃. Sedimentary environment is braided river which means the sand is thick, clean
and continuous but unconsolidated in reservoir. Reservoir thickness is over 50 meters. Porosity is higher
than 28%. Reservoir permeability is about 5 darcy.
The characteristic of the reservoir is that bottom water extensively developed. CSS pilot test has been
carried out in 3 wells. Because of clogging in wellbore and pump barrel, operators can not keep continuous
production. In order to solve the increase of viscosity in the wellbore, many kinds of additives has been
considered in production system but didn't get satisfying results. SAGD is an effective approach in thick
massive reservoirs. But strong bottom water eliminated the possibility of decreasing pressure in the reservoir
for SAGD process. Because other process such as steam flooding, air injection are obviously not applicable
in this reservoir. The only solution for this reservoir is to adapt SAGD process to the reservoir condition.
SPE-190412-MS 3

Supercritical CO2 –steam coinjection process was proposed in order to solve the problems of high reservoir
pressure and low efficiency of SAGD process. The theory of this approach is to share the gas chamber
pressure with large amount of gas and increase oil mobility with viscosity reduction synergy of high
solubility of gas and high quality steam.

Figure 1—Crosssection for target reservoir

Mechanism of Supercritical CO2 in heavy oil recovery

The mechanical and flow characteristics of heavy oil and CO2 will affect on recovery. The mechanisms of
supercritical CO2 in heavy oil recovery process include oil swelling, viscosity reduction, decrease interfacial
tension, improving injectivity, and blowdown recovery.

Low Density and low viscosity of supercritical CO2

The density and viscosity was tested in high temperature and high pressure conditions. The results are shown
in figure 2. It was found that density of CO2 at conventional conditions, density of CO2 can be as high
as 0.97g/cm3(10MPa, 10℃). But under supercritical conditions，density varies slightly with pressure
increase. The charscteristic density of CO2 is only 0.12g/cm3 under 10 MPa and 200℃.

Figure 2—Variation of CO2 density with different pressure and temperature

4 SPE-190412-MS

Swelling and Viscosity Reduction

Solubility is one of the most important properties for advantage of supercritical CO2. Super critical CO2
is much easier to dissolve into hydrocarbon fluids, which causes obvious volume increase for crude oil.
The swelling factor is influenced by the temperature, pressure and oil composition. According to Mark A.
Klins and S. M. Fraouq Ali[8], 1982, 123.8 m3 of CO2 dissolved in 1 m3 crude oil which could results in 35%
increase of oil volume under certain conditions. Also according to Kamal N. Jha[9], 1986, around 50-100 m3
of CO2 can be dissolved in each m3 of oil under 4-6 MPa and 20-25℃, which resulted in 10-20% increase
in oil volume and more than 90% reduction in oil viscosity.
The solubility saturated crude under 20℃, 50℃,100℃, 200℃, 300℃ and 2~20MPa pressure were
also tested in laboratory study. The oil sample is from Guantao formation, Liaohe Oilfield because of similar
viscosity with target crude under ambient conditions. Solutiblity test results are shown in Fig 3. It was found
that the solubility of CO2 increase linearly with pressure and decrease with temperature. Under 10MPA and
200℃, solubility of CO2 can be as high as 34m3 and results in 15% volume swelling.

Figure 3—Solubility of CO2 in Guantao Oil Sample

Great solubility of CO2 in crude under high pressure and high temperature results in sharp decrease of
viscosity. The viscosity of saturated crude were tested with capillary viscometer under saturated conditions.
The results are shown in Figure 4. It was shown that the viscosity reduction ratio is more than 95% under
2MPa and 20℃ if saturated with CO2. Under high temperature viscosity is also reduced by more than
70%. This means the mobility of crude will increase by almost 3 times in reservoir conditions if CO2 is
in supercritical status.
SPE-190412-MS 5

Figure 4—Viscosity of saturated crude in different conditions

Decrease of Interfacial Tension

Although interfacial tension between CO2 and crude can not be decreased to zero during immiscible CO2
flooding, it still can be lowered down due to solubtion of CO2 both in water and crude. Kamal N. Jha[9] found
that the interfacial tension between oil and water dropped by about 30% in the presence of CO2. Pressure
was demonstrated to be a critical factor. S. B. Dyer and S. M. Farouq Ali also proved in an experimental
study of heavy oil, the interfacial tension decreased from 25 to 16 mN/m when pressure was increased from
0.1 to 5.5 MPa[10].
Similar test were also carried out with pendant drop method under different pressure and temperature.
It can be showen that the IFT decreases with pressure and increase with temperature. When temperateur is
15℃, the IFT of saturated crude with CO2 under 10MPa will less than 5 mN/m. It is about 80% decrease
comparing to IFT at ambient conditions.

Figure 5—Variation of IFT between CO2 and oil under different conditons

Heatloss reduction
Because gas has lower thermal conductivity and thermal capacity, the mixture of gas and steam has lowered
thermal conductivity than pure steam and it is much obvious even when the amount of gas is large (eg. More
6 SPE-190412-MS

than 5 percent). With this characteristic the heat loss will be reduced along the injection tube. Calculation
were carried out with different mole fraction of gas. The parameters are listed in table 1.

Table 1—The parameters used in calculation of heatloss along injection tubing

Parameter value unit

well length 1000 m

casing length 1000 m

roughness 0.0001

tubing length 1000 m

inner tubing diameter 0.062179 m

outer tubing diameter 0.073152 m

inner casing diameter 0.161544 m

outer casing diameter 0.176784 m

Tubing conductivity 3.74E+06 J/m-day-C

Insulaing tube conductivity 77760 J/m-day-C

casing conductivity 3.74E+06 J/m-day-C

cementing conductivity 30240 J/m-day-C

formatino conductivity 1.50E+05 J/m-day-C

The calculation results are shown in fig 6. It can be seen that the steam quality decrease because of
heatloss while going through the injection tube. If there is no gas combined with steam, heat loss can be as
high as 40% percent. Bottom hole quality is only around 40%. With the addition of gas the heat loss can
be decreased. Bottom hole quality is increasing up to 60% when 40% mole percent of gas was combined
and injected into wellbore.

Figure 6—Heat loss of steam along injection tubing for different gas mole percent

Partial Pressure theory

In gas assisted SAGD process, gas is injected into steam chamber to accumulate around the boundary of
steam chamber. According to Qi Jiang[11], Yongrong Gao[12] etc, gas injection can replace part of steam
injection to improve the economic performance for the whole process and improve sweeping volume of
steam chamber. In supercritical CO2 steam co-injection process, the amount of gas is much higher than that
SPE-190412-MS 7

of gas-SAGD process so that gas can take more partial pressure for gas-steam chamber. Fig 7 shows the
schematic of this process.

Figure 7—Schematic for supercritical CO2 –gas injection process an gas-SAGD process

According to the above mechanisms, it can be concluded that pressure, temperature and concentration of
dissolved carbon dioxide are the main factors affecting the oil flow in steam injection process. High pressure,
high CO2 concentration, and low temperature will improve the performance of steam injection process and
oil recovery. Partial pressure is the most critical parameter in the process, but it should be carefully balanced
between CO2 solution and high steam temperature to make this process stable.

Process simulation
H Reservoir can not be developed with conventional SAGD process because of great depth and bottom
water, Super critical CO2 Assisted SAGD study is carried out. The theoretical model was built according
to average property of H reservoir(table 2). There are totally 100*50*50 grids in the model. 2 horizontal
wells were placed at the bottom part of reservoir parallel to oil water contact. The distance between lower
producer and injector is 5 m. And distance to bottom water is also 5 m. Bottom water was set by Fetkovich
method with 100m thickness and 5000m radius

Table 2—Average property of H Reservoir

Parameter value

depth (m) 800

Reservoir pressure (Mpa) 8.5

Reservoir temperature (°C) 60

Permeability (D) 5

Porosity 0.3

Initial oil saturation 0.7

Viscosity (mPa.s@80°C) 5500

8 SPE-190412-MS

Production was initiated with circulation and steam huff & puff. Then the process was convert into
continuous steam injection in the upper well and continuous production in lower well. In order to prevent
the breakthrough of steam into producers, steam production rate was set at 5 m3/d. The operation pressure
was kept at original reservoir pressure in order to mitigate water influx into reservoir. Gas injection was
started after steam chamber reached the top of reservoir. The volume ratio of gas at surface conditions to
cold water equivalent volume was set at 400:1(mole percent about 40%). The phase equilibrium parameters
and viscosity –temperature relation were generated from the tested solubility parameters and relative
permeability properties are borrowed from similar extra heavy oil reservoir in Guantao oil field.

Results Discussion
The simulation results is shown in fig 8. It can be seen that the production of such operation process is
effective in target reservoir. The dailiy oil rate for 400 m wellbore can be as high as 120t/d. And steam
injection rate is only about 100m3/d. That means gas already replaced most part of steam comparing to
conventional steam injection process (SOR around 2~5). The only disadvantage of this process simulation
is that the recovery fator is around 40% which can be optimized in future project design.

Figure 8—Process simulation for supercritical CO2-steam co injection process

The cross section perperdicular to horizontal well was cut after 10 years in simulation. Fig 9 shows the
temperature distribution. It can be seen that the temperature in the inner part of steam chamber is up to 300℃
and the corresponding saturation pressure is as high as 8 MPa. Steam overriding is also very obvious for the
process which results in inversed triangle shape of the steam chamber. The high temperature zone expands
below the caprock and is confined only in the inner and upper part of the steam chamber. Temperature
decreases with the position getting away from inner part of steam chamber. This also indicates that the gas
content increases with getting away from the core part of chamber. According to insitu temperature of steam,
it can be conducted that the temperature in the black triangle area only around 200℃ which means insitu
partial pressure of steam is 1.5MPa. From the comparison between different position of steam chamber, it
can be seen that the gas shared great partial pressure of the whole chamber and steam only provide necessary
heat to decrease viscosity of crude.
SPE-190412-MS 9

Figure 9—Temperature distribution of cross-section in steam chamber (perpendicular to horizontal well)

The oil saturation distribution at the same time for the same cross section is shown in fig 10. The black
triangle indicates front of the low saturation area in co-injection process. The black triangle in the figures
is in the same position for fig 9. It can be seen that the low residual saturation area is much larger than high
temperature area. That means the insitu oil saturation is not only decreased by high temperature steam, but
also great solubility and viscosity reduction effect. Also the oil saturation in the top of gassteam chamber is
much lower than residual oil saturation of steam. That means low interfacial tension effect of great solubility
of CO2 both in water and crude under supercritical conditions.

Figure 10—Oil saturation distribution of cross-section in steam chamber (perpendicular to horizontal well)

Fig 11 shows the gas saturation distribution in gas-steam chamber. It can be seen that the gas saturation
in the inner part of chamber is very high and gas saturation on the edge is around 0.5. In the core area the
steam is still in gas state with out condenstation. And CO2 is also in gas phase, so gas saturation is high in
this area. In the top of chamber, steam condensates into hot water and gas saturation decreases to around 0.7.
10 SPE-190412-MS

Figure 11—Gas saturation distribution of cross-section in steam chamber (perpendicular to horizontal well)

Fig 12 shows CO2 content distribution in gas phase. Combining with the gas phase distribution the CO2
accumulates in the oil saturation front. But CO2 content is only around 0.4 (the injected content) in the top
and inner of gas-steam chamber. And this value increases from the inner to the out boundary corresponding
to the condensation of steam.

Figure 12—CO2 content of cross-section in steam chamber (perpendicular to horizontal well)

Conclusions
From the study of this paper, shows that the supercritical CO2-steam co-injection process can be a solution
for high pressure extra-heavy oil reservoir with strong bottom water. Also it can be an effective approach
for future operation adjustment for reservoir with solid caprock which can endure high operation pressure.
1. Super critical CO2 has low density comparing to converntional status, and varies slightly with
temperature. This helps the the sharing of partial pressure with great volume of gas injection.
2. Solubility of supercritical-CO2 under 10MPa and 200℃ can be as high as 50m3/m3. At super critical
conditions, solubility of gas in heavy oil is almost 100m3/m3. Viscosity of heavy oil saturated with
gas will be lower than 200mPa.s at 150℃which is 80% less than that without gas. The viscosity is
already low enough for drainage process.
SPE-190412-MS 11

3. High pressure supercritical CO2 –steam coinjeciton process simulation shows that temperature
decreases gradually from the inner part to the out range of steam chamber when injected mole percent
of gas is 40%. This means the decrease of steam saturation pressure related to partial pressure of
steam because injected gas will take the partial pressure in steam chamber. In this process steam and
gas became same important because gas solution plays a major role for viscosity reduction on the
boundary of steam chamber.
4. The recovery process shows high recovery factor which is similar to SAGD process. And steam oil
ratio is 0.8~1.2 which is much lower than any existing pure steam injection SAGD process. Simulation
results shows that during the operation process bottom water will not flux into steam chamber after
the balance between reservoir and bottom water was achieved.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge CNPC Company for permission to publish this paper. Also
the authors would like to acknowledge the support of National Science and Technology Major Project
2016ZX05012002 - 002 group to fulfill this work.

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