Simulation Studies on the Effect of Asphaltene Precipitation on Oil Recovery during CO₂ Injection for Light Oil Reservoir

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) is method widely use in many company for production. Gas injection is one of the oldest and most popular methods used in EOR. EOR is used to increase oil recovery. Gas is injected inside the reservoir and is stored in the geological formation. CO2 injection is one type of gas injection and is preferred to use in light oil reservoir as the gas and oil can be mix forming a miscible phase reducing the interfacial tension of crude oil and flowing together to the surface. Unfortunately, in
wells that has asphaltene, precipitation tends to exist even though the percentage of asphaltene is small. Once precipitation occurs, the asphaltene will clump together
forming a flock of asphaltene and deposit in the reservoir when it is too heavy to be carried out by the flow causing formation damage such as porosity and permeability
reduction and wettability alteration. Asphaltene precipitation will also cause the wellbore, tubing and facilities equipments to break down due to the accumulation in it. All these will lead to decrease in production. The author will continue doing research work reading more to understand the effect of asphaltene. Then, the author will use CMG software to simulate light oil reservoir under CO2 injection to anticipate the outcome before it actually happens as when precipitation occurs, the cost to clean it
mechanically and chemically is time consuming, expensive and unsafe. The author will use the Builder, WinProp and GEM to do the simulation work. The findings that the
author found was consistent which the experimental work done by many experts in the industry and the author had proven that asphaltene precipitation causes formation
damaged which in turn reduces the permeability and porosity of the formation.