The Influence of Clay Minerals Swelling on Reserve Production

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Abstract

During the oil and gas reservoirs development, various processes occur, ranging from varying the physicochemical properties of formation fluids to changing the reservoir properties of productive formations, which leads to their destruction. All these processes can influence the final oil recovery in different ways. Research into the influence of clays on the permeability of sandstones has been conducted for more than 50 years, but the presence of clay minerals in reservoir rocks still poses a problem for oil production. When oil is displaced from productive formations, the injected water interacts with the clay minerals of the rock, which leads to significant changes in the dynamics of oil production in the fields. This parameter can especially change when maintaining reservoir pressure by injecting fresh water, since the composition of the injected water significantly affects the permeability of reservoirs. In addition to the type and spatial distribution of clay minerals, another important component that influences the degree of permeability change is fluid composition. Basically, the reduction in permeability occurs when the injected water is less mineralized than the formation water. To establish the dependence of swelling on clay minerals, the work analyzed the results of 1007 laboratory samples that were used to study the mineral composition of clay fractions. To identify the dependence of swelling on various clay minerals, a significant number of graphs were constructed and a relationship was established between swelling and mixed-layer formations of the hydromica-montmorillonite series, which made it possible to establish the swelling values for other fields. To determine the effect of swelling on the change in porosity, a coefficient for reducing porosity due to swelling was introduced. The calculation of oil reserves for the YuV1 layer of 13 fields showed that when taking into account the clay minerals swelling, the value of reserves decreased by an average of 8.6%. It was shown that the injection of fresh water led to the destruction of reservoir rocks of fields with high swelling and low porosity, which was confirmed by the low production of reserves for other fields characterized by opposite values of swelling and porosity. Freshwater injection did not affect production from initial recoverable reserves.

Keywords

reservoir rocks destructionclay minerals swellingpermeability changeoil reservesinteraction of injected water with rock clay minerals

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Article information

Published
28 June 2024
Issue date
28 June 2024
Issue
Vol. 24, No. 2 (2024)
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