Abstract
One of the EOR technologies is low-salinity water flooding (LSWF) is an EOR method that operates at a lower cost than other EOR methods, which makes it a preferred area of interest for oil industry economists, who continue to call for EOR costs to come down. The aim is to minimize the possible cost to recover as much oil as possible. The performance of low salinity waterflooding in decreasing residual oil saturation in low permeability- porosity clay-rich sandstone reservoir.
Porosity test, core flooding test, XRD and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) tests were achived in this study. Salinity effect on the porosity, oil recovery, and injecton pressure was established. The results showed that low salinity waterflooding resulted in improving oil recovery and porosity with permeability reduction and decreased the clay content. SEM results results showed that the flowing direction will be restributed during low salinity waterflooding by realizing some sand particle and minerals and increased the porosity. Therefore, low salinity water flooding can modify both porosity and permeability and, in turn, improve oil recovery factor.
