699F4977-FCB7-461E-B7D0-846DC1BEF6AF@3x

Jackson County, MI – Advanced CO2 – EOR Program in Southern Michigan


The Chemically Enabled CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) in Multi-Porosity, Hydrothermally Altered Carbonates in the Southern Michigan Basin Project (DOE-FOA-0001988) focuses on experimental design, field testing, and development of CO2-EOR in the Trenton Black River play. The research concept involves integration of multiple data types to evaluate fields in the study area that have the lowest technical and environmental risk and optimal setting for EOR. Laboratory experiments will be used to optimize a CO2 flood composition specific to hydrothermal dolomite rock properties, and subsequently design and simulate injection scenarios that offer wettability alteration, foaming, and reduced surface tension. This work will improve oil recovery from matrix porosity and mitigate the impact of fracture zones. The optimized design will be implemented and tested in a Trenton/Black River field. The results will provide strategies to improve oil recovery in complex carbonate formations in the Michigan Basin as well as in other carbonate plays. The key risks include working with data vintages; data availability; assessment of complex HTD systems, including thief zones and conformance issues; wellbore integrity of old wells; and cost and sourcing of CO2 for field tests. The identified risks will be mitigated through the developed methodologies and partnerships under laboratory experiments, characterization, and machine learning tasks, and by field test planning. The project will help reinvigorate depleted oil fields in HTD type reservoirs in the Michigan Basin, with technical transferability to other similar basins. While project funding will initiate CO2-EOR infrastructure in the Midwest, it will also lay the groundwork for future work.

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