The Vaca Muerta Shale is a very large, important oil and gas resource located in the Neuquen Basin, Argentina and covers an area of about 30,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles), and reaches a depth of about 2,900 meters (9,500 feet). Oil was discovered in the Vaca Muerta in 2010 by YPF, and since then, more than 2,000 Vaca Muerta shale wells have been drilled, completed and placed into production. Oil and gas production from the Vaca Muerta has steadily increased to over 300,000 barrels of oil and 2 Billion cubic feet of gas per day, as of June, 2023. Vaca Muerta well productivity has also been steadily improving and now rivals that of any US shale oil basin. The Vaca Muerta shale produces dry gas in its deepest areas, transitioning to rich gas condensate, volatile oil and black oil at its shallow margins. Liquid hydrocarbons are produced from the shale via solution gas drive. In this paper, we introduce a novel EOR process that can greatly increase the production and recovery of oil and gas from the Vaca Muerta shale, while reducing the cost per barrel of recovered oil, and reducing GHG emissions and water consumption/production/disposal.
An EOR method is proposed that utilizes a triplex pump to inject a tuned liquid solvent solution tuned specifically for the rock and fluid properties of the reservoir into the shale oil reservoir, and coupled with an efficient method to recover the injectant at the surface, for storage and reinjection. The process is designed and integrated during operation using compositional reservoir simulation in order to optimize oil recovery.
