Publications

Coupling low salinity water flooding and steam flooding for sandstone reservoirs; low salinity-alternating-steam flooding (LSASF)

Al-Saedi, Hasan N.; Alkhamis, Mohammed; Brady, Patrick V.; Flori, Ralph E.

Low salinity water flooding and steam flooding are two novel combination flooding methods that were combined due to the important role of both methods in increasing oil recovery (especially heavy oil). Low salinity flooding was examined by many laboratory and field works and showed an interesting result. Steam flooding was tested on heavy oil fields and the heavy oil recovery increased by reducing oil viscosity. Although the steam showed an improvement in heavy oil recovery, the density difference between steam and heavy oil raised a problems with steam gravity override, channeling, and early breakthrough. For that reason, we developed the low salinity alternating steam flood (LSASF) in order to gather the benefits of low salinity, reduce oil viscosity by steam, and prevent the steam problems mentioned earlier. The laboratory experiments showed that the optimum scenario was Scenario (3). The shorter the injected cycles, the more oil recovery. This combination of echnology can solve the steam flooding problems and support the steam by LS water, which has the ability to increase oil recovery.