Page 22 - Formation Damage during Improved Oil Recovery Fundamentals and Applications

Overview of Formation Damage During Improved and Enhanced Oil Recovery 5

can be attractive to combine LSWF with other IOR techniques to mini-
mize the negative effects and enhance the positive consequence of LSWF.
Skauge et al. (2011) confirmed that surfactant flooding under conditions
of low salinity perform better than in cases where surfactants and low-
salinity water are applied in isolation in terms of reduction of interfacial
tension (IFT) and capillary number. Dang et al. (2016) reported the better
performance of using secondary-mode LSW followed by LSWF
combined with water-alternative-CO 2 flooding, rather than that of high-
salinity WAG, standalone continuous LSWF and CO 2 flooding modes.
This is because of the enhanced solubility of CO 2 , ion exchange, carbon-
ate mineral and clay distributions, and wettability alteration. Shiran and
Skauge (2013) evaluated the synergistic effect on residual oil mobilization
and EOR by combining LSWF with polymer injection in both second-
ary and tertiary modes. This takes advantage of fines migration in deep
reservoirs away from injection well and prevents problems of fines
migration in the near-wellbore region (Fig. 1.1).

Figure 1.1 The links between potential formation damage mechanisms and specific
EOR/IOR techniques and reservoir types.