Laboratory Evaluation of CO2 Flooding: A Strategic Technology for Sustainable Development of Oil Companies

With the development of humankind, energy demand and climate change have both faced with serious situations now. In order to find new technologies for solving these problems, long core displacement experiment concerning CO2 flooding is conducted with 11 different core samples from N formation in M oilfield. Results show that oil production rate will be greatly improved and the oil recovery can reach nearly 25% by the CO2 huff and puff process using 3 rounds which is much higher than the real recovery factor in M oilfield. Considering the enhanced oil recovery and carbon storage effects generated by this technique at the same time, CO2 flooding is definitely a promising technique with great potential both for sustainable development of oil companies and humankind. For large scale field application, it is suggested that oil companies and governments should provide corresponding support policy concerning further study of this technology. Particularly, further studies should focus on the application of CO2 flooding with other EOR technologies, optimal CO2 injection mode, optimal CO2 injection rate, optimal CO2 injection pressure and so on.