Abstract
The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in order to decelerate the global warming process could be achieved through the emerging process of geological CO2 storage. Also in terms of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) the injection of CO2 as a pure component or as part of a mixture has proved to increase the productivity of oil and gas reservoirs.
Optimization techniques have been applied independently to the reservoir and surface models, leading to non-optimal solutions due to the non-dynamic integration between models. A recent trend of the industry is the integration of sub-surface and surface simulators to have a better representation of the fluid production/injection, taking into account the constantly changing interaction between systems.
The integrated approach has been used to integrate multiple reservoirs with common and advanced surface facilities to properly model the fluid flow behavior of the asset. Different injection variables, facilities, well completion, number of wells have been included in the analysis and numerical reservoir simulation models have been integrated with a network. As CO2 is captured, it is transported and re-injected to neighbor reservoirs, as an enhancement process for productivity or for storage purpose.
After proving the feasibility of facilities for CO2 injection as EOR process or storage, the integrated approach has shown a more comprehensive solution that could be used for the design and further optimization of this type of projects. Analysis of reservoir properties as permeability, temperature, etc. is also taken into account in order to asses the viability of the CO2 optimal injection and storage strategy, while minimizing cost. Finally, integrated asset modeling also shows the flexibility to represent different types of settings such as CO2 source (reservoir and/or fossil fuel power plants), types of reservoirs and network scenarios.
