SIMULATION STUDY ON OPTIMIZING FOAM-ASSISTED-WATER-ALTERNATING GAS (FAWAG) PARAMETERS FOR REDUCING ASPHALTENE PRECIPITATION IN LIGHT OIL

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) had become a focus nowadays to maximize oil recovery from the well. One of the EOR methods is Foam-Assisted-Water-Alternating-Gas (FAWAG) injection which is an improved techniques developed from Water-Alternating-Gas (WAG) injection to provide better gas mobility control and preventing early gas breakthrough due to viscous fingering and gravity overriding. The presence of asphaltene in light oil reservoir can bring unwanted problems especially in the production stage affecting the inflow and tubing performance besides reduction in term of production. The objective of this project is to investigate the impact of FAWAG on asphaltene precipitation by controlling the FAWAG parameters; gas injection rate, water injection rate, surfactant concentration, WAG ratio and WAG cycle. The method employed in this dissertation is to perform simulation run using Eclipse300 on the FAWAG parameters in order to decide on the optimum parameters to control the precipitation of asphaltene. From the simulation, the optimum parameters of FAWAG injection is obtain successfully and it can be concluded that FAWAG performs better with the presence of asphaltene.