Agenda | All Times Central Standard Time (UTC -6)

This opening session will provide a foundation for the status of gas-injection enhanced oil recovery (EOR) by reviewing the performance of past and current field pilots in the Eagle Ford. Also, in this session, we will discuss other areas that might be good candidates for gas-injection EOR, by relating field parameters and supply/eco-systems that are conducive for success. Discussions in this session will include:

• What type of production response was obtained after gas-injection?
• What were the different variations of gas-injection that have been employed?
• Did the pilot perform as expected?
• For unconventionals, what reservoir characteristics are favorable to EOR?
• For a new area, what resources or infrastructure is needed for a viable EOR operation?

This session will address questions regarding the dominant EOR mechanisms in unconventional EOR processes including rock pore structure, altered phase behavior in tight rocks, and rock fluid interactions and their impacts on incremental oil production.

The discussion leaders will stimulate discussion around the topics of pore scale displacement efficiency, matrix sweep efficiency, and overall miscibility achievement in tight rock pore structure with injected solvents. The other topics of discussion will include the dominant EOR processes in unconventional reservoirs that influence EOR such as advection, molecular diffusion, miscible front development, oil swelling, vaporization and condensing processes, and their implementation in modeling the unconventional EOR processes.

This session will address basin/asset screening. Discussion topics would be as follows or similar:

• What are the critical screening parameters, critical datasets, logistics and economic constraints, and go/no-go criteria required for candidate high-grading and down-selection?
• How would these parameters change in the future?
• What kind of tests should we perform early to have the data we need for asset screening?

The session will also delve into micro to macro screening with discussion ranging across topics as follows or similar:

• Laboratory and fluid analyses to understand rock and fluid properties for recovery potential
• Well level and pad level analyses/data from drilling, fracturing, and completion to select the best locations
• Gas availability and facilities required for successful results

Discussion topics would be as follows or similar:

• When to intervene or start EOR?
• When do we conclude EOR or a maximum number of cycles?
• Injection fluid selection metrics and composition
• Huff-n-puff scheme comprising of injection volume and pressure, cycle frequency, injection/soak/production duration
• Surveillance and data acquisition
• Key performance indicators such as utilization, incremental oil, reservoir gas retention

In Session 4, we discussed optimizing a Huff-n-puff project for a single well with all the dynamics of its communication from its fractures to the matrix pore space it is draining.  However, many unconventional wells are in communication through the fracture network with offset wells.  Suddenly our single well Huff-n-pull project may actually be a multi-well project.

Discussion topics would be as follows or similar:

• We didn’t get confinement, now what? 
• Plan A didn’t work. What is Plan B and C?

Gas injection EOR is a mature process for conventional reservoir development and is a developing technology for unconventional resources. More than 200 wells in Texas are currently being operated with Huff-n-puff improved oil recovery (IOR) operations. Oil reserves have reportedly increased by 30-70% with the implementation of Huff-n-puff. For gas injection to be an economically competitive process for unconventional development, integration and optimization of surface facilities are required to minimize the capital investment, operational costs, and operational risks.

In this session, the discussion leaders will share their experiences and facilitate discussions on integration of surface facilities with consistent gas supply and compression, production/operational issues, and risk management strategies

Through interactive exercises, we will bring together a collective set of best practices to ensure successful cyclic gas injection field application as well as deployment at scale. This session will focus on capturing critical learnings from the forum's prior sessions and wrestle with key questions that drive readiness for both pilot proposals and scaling up deployment.