Natural gas underground storage and oil recovery with horizontal wells

Abstract

In this research study a reservoir simulation is conducted to compare the performance of the wells in a depleted oilfield for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and subsequent Underground Natural Gas Storage considering different well profiles including vertical and horizontal trajectories. The underground gas is simulated to be stored at an increasing reservoir pressure up to a magnitude that is to 85% of the initial pressure, and reservoir pressure remains constant throughout. The results of the simulations reveal more oil which can be potentially recovered by means of developing the field with horizontal wells. The extended component transformation between the oil and gas phases, additional viscosity reduction in oil phase, low gas oil ratio, and favoring bottomhole pressures attained by means of horizontal wells has shown to be considerably effective for EOR and underground storage applications.