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Abstract This paper presents a three-dimensional, three-phase compositional model considering CO2 phase equilibrium between water and oil. In this model, CO2 is mutually soluble in aqueous and hydrocarbon phases, while other components, except water, exist in hydrocarbon phase. The Peng–Robinson (PR) equation of state and the Wong–Sandler mixing rule with non-random two-liquid parameters are used to calculate CO2 fugacity in the aqueous phase. One-dimensional and three-dimensional CO2 flooding examples show that a significant amount of injected CO2 is dissolved in water. Our simulation shows 7% of injected CO2 can be dissolved in the aqueous phase, which delays oil recovery by 4%. The gas rate predicted by the model is smaller than the conventional model as long as water is undersaturated by CO2, which can be considered as “lost” in the aqueous phase. The model also predicts that the delayed oil can be recovered after the gas breakthrough, indicating that delayed oil is hard to recover in field applications. A three-dimensional example reveals that a highly stratified reservoir causes uneven displacement and serious CO2 breakthrough. If mobility control measures like water alternating gas are undertaken, the solubility effects will be more pronounced than this example.

In the early time of oilfield development, insufficient production data and unclear understanding of oil production presented a challenge to reservoir engineers in devising effective development plans. To address this challenge, this study proposes a method using data mining technology to search for similar oil fields and predict well productivity. A query system of 135 analogy parameters is established based on geological and reservoir engineering research, and the weight values of these parameters are calculated using a data algorithm to establish an analogy system. The fuzzy matter-element algorithm is then used to calculate the similarity between oil fields, with fields having similarity greater than 70% identified as similar oil fields. Using similar oil fields as sample data, 8 important factors affecting well productivity are identified using the Pearson coefficient and mean decrease impurity (MDI) method. To establish productivity prediction models, linear regression (LR), random forest regression (RF), support vector regression (SVR), backpropagation (BP), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), and light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) algorithms are used. Their performance is evaluated using the coefficient of determination (R²), explained variance score (EV), mean squared error (MSE), and mean absolute error (MAE) metrics. The LightGBM model is selected to predict the productivity of 30 wells in the PL field with an average error of only 6.31%, which significantly improves the accuracy of the productivity prediction and meets the application requirements in the field. Finally, a software platform integrating data query, oil field analogy, productivity prediction, and knowledge base is established to identify patterns in massive reservoir development data and provide valuable technical references for new reservoir development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polymer flooding in fractured wells has been extensively applied in oilfields to enhance oil recovery. In contrast to water, polymer solution exhibits non-Newtonian and nonlinear behavior such as effects of shear thinning and shear thickening, polymer convection, diffusion, adsorption retention, inaccessible pore volume and reduced effective permeability. Meanwhile, the flux density and fracture conductivity along the hydraulic fracture are generally non-uniform due to the effects of pressure distribution, formation damage, and proppant breakage. In this paper, we present an oil-water two-phase flow model that captures these complex non-Newtonian and nonlinear behavior, and non-uniform fracture characteristics in fractured polymer flooding. The hydraulic fracture is firstly divided into two parts: high-conductivity fracture near the wellbore and low-conductivity fracture in the far-wellbore section. A hybrid grid system, including perpendicular bisection (PEBI) and Cartesian grid, is applied to discrete the partial differential flow equations, and the local grid refinement method is applied in the near-wellbore region to accurately calculate the pressure distribution and shear rate of polymer solution. The combination of polymer behavior characterizations and numerical flow simulations are applied, resulting in the calculation for the distribution of water saturation, polymer concentration and reservoir pressure. Compared with the polymer flooding well with uniform fracture conductivity, this non-uniform fracture conductivity model exhibits the larger pressure difference, and the shorter bilinear flow period due to the decrease of fracture flow ability in the far-wellbore section. The field case of the fall-off test demonstrates that the proposed method characterizes fracture characteristics more accurately, and yields fracture half-lengths that better match engineering reality, enabling a quantitative segmented characterization of the near-wellbore section with high fracture conductivity and the far-wellbore section with low fracture conductivity. The novelty of this paper is the analysis of pressure performances caused by the fracture dynamics and polymer rheology, as well as an analysis method that derives formation and fracture parameters based on the pressure and its derivative curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]