Recovery Potential and Mechanism Investigation of the Supercritical CO2 EOR in the Bakken Tight Formation

Abstract The low recovery of oil from the tight liquid-rich formations is still a main challenge for the tight reservoir. Thus, in order to break the chains and remove the obstacle such as the low recovery factor in the Bakken tight formation, even though the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies were already well applied in this field, the supercritical CO2 flooding was proposed as an immense potential recovery method for the production improvement. In this research, we conducted a series of CO2 flooding experiments under various injection pressure (2500psi, 2800psi, 3000psi, 3500psi), to investigate the recovery potential of the core sample from Bakken tight formation. Also, the NMR analysis was processed of the core samples flooded with CO2 agent under the above injection pressure variables. The result comparison demonstrates that, with the supercritical CO2 injection pressure increase, the recovery factor gets incremental trend from 8.8% up to 33% recovery. Also, the macro pore and natural fracture system were proved to contribute more on the recovery potential. After reaching the miscible phase between the CO2 and oil in the sample, the hydrocarbon existed in the micro pores start the contribution to the recovery potential. Thus, The CO2 was identified as a potential recovery agent and the supercritical CO2 EOR method was proposed as the potential recovery technology due to the high recovery factor obtained in the immiscible and miscible processes.