Chemical Stimulation of Oil Wells Producing from Carbonate Reservoirs

65017 Oil well formation damage is detrimental to the oil production rate and ultimate recovery from carbonate reservoirs that contain 3.7 billion barrels of proved domestic reserve. This project will develop an innovative well stimulation technique, based on laboratory measurements of wettability alteration coupled with artificial intelligence, to design well treatments. Phase I laboratory results demonstrated that the new technology works in the laboratory and that critical laboratory variables can be determined from field data. The oil recovered with surfactants varied from 15 to 640% of the oil recovered with reservoir water alone. Artificial Intelligence was used to correlate well logs with core information. The correlations were then used to develop pseudo porosity, bulk volume oil, bulk volume water, and aspect ratio logs of seven wells. These pseudo-logs were then correlated with the average oil rate of the first 12 producing months indicating that the methodology may extend to the incremental oil resulting from field experiments. In Phase II, the laboratory experiments will be scaled-up to field experiments. Experimental wells will be selected based on bulk volume oil and porosity logs as well as other measured production parameters. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: Small oil companies are expected to be the primary domestic market for new stimulation treatments. The technology should reduce the risk of initial field trials.