An integrated carbon-dioxide-foam enhanced-oil-recovery pilot program with combined carbon capture, utilization, and storage in an onshore Texas heterogeneous carbonate field

A carbon-dioxide (CO₂) -foam enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) field pilot research program has been started to advance the technology of CO₂ foam for mobility control in a heterogeneous carbonate reservoir. Increased oil recovery with associated anthropogenic-CO₂ storage is a promising technology for mitigating global warming as part of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). Previous field tests with CO₂ foam report various results because of injectivity problems and the difficulty of attributing fluid displacement specifically to CO₂ foam. Thus, a comprehensive integrated multiscale methodology is required for project design to better link laboratory- and field-scale displacement mechanisms. This study presents an integrated upscaling approach for designing a miscible CO₂-foam field trial, including pilot-well-selection criteria and laboratory corefloods combined with reservoir-scale simulation to offer recommendations for the injection of alternating slugs of surfactant solution and CO₂, or surfactant-alternating-gas (SAG) injection, while assessing CO₂-storage potential.

Laboratory investigations include dynamic aging, foam-stability scans, CO₂-foam EOR corefloods with associated CO₂ storage, and unsteady-state CO₂/water endpoint relative permeability measurements. Tertiary CO₂-foam EOR corefloods at oil-wet conditions result in a total recovery factor of 80% of original oil in place (OOIP), with an incremental recovery of 30% of OOIP by CO₂ foam after waterflooding. Stable CO₂ foam, using aqueous surfactants with a gas fraction of 0.70, provided mobility-reduction factors (MRFs) up to 340 compared with pure-CO₂ injection at reservoir conditions. Oil recovery, gas-mobility reduction, producing-gas/oil ratio (GOR), and CO₂ utilization at field pilot scale were investigated with a validated numerical model. Simulation studies show the effectiveness of foam to reduce gas mobility, improve CO₂ utilization, and decrease GOR.