Under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, Gruy Federal, Inc. has prepared comprehensive review reports for 19 projects in 16 fields in which carbon dioxide miscible injection was used to enhance oil recovery. Information from the geological and engineering literature, raw data from public records, and limited information supplied by project operators allowed nonproprietary review and analysis of 7 full-scale (i.e., commercial intent) field projects and 12 pilot projects. Abbreviated summaries of the field reviews for the full-scale projects are presented in this paper. Analysis and synthesis of the data and information from the field projects is also related to published CO2 flooding technology.

These data indicate that injection of CO2 is a technically efficient enhanced oil recovery process over a wide range of geologic and reservoir conditions. Hence, published technical guidelines for judging applicability of CO2 injection are probably too restrictive.

Keywords:
waterflooding, displacement, experiment, critical temperature, reservoir, chemical flooding methods, carbon dioxide, mechanism, reservoir oil, carbon dioxide injection field test
Subjects:
Fluid Characterization, Improved and Enhanced Recovery, Storage Reservoir Engineering, Phase behavior and PVT measurements, Fluid modeling, equations of state, Waterflooding, Gas-injection methods, Chemical flooding methods, Miscible methods, CO2 capture and sequestration
Copyright 1980, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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