Improvement of eagle ford shale formation's water imbibition by mineral dissolution and wettability alteration

In order to understand the performance of waterflooding in nano-darcy permeability, naturally fractured shale reservoirs, an integrated study of spontaneous imbibition has been performed. In this study, oil recovery during spontaneous imbibition in naturally fractured shale samples was improved using different water formulations. Different water solutions were formulated by adding different amounts of HCl and NaOH to either distilled water or 2 wt% KCl-base brine solution. Eight water formulations, distilled water, 2% KCl brine, low pH HCl solutions (0.74-1.2), and high pH alkaline solutions (11.7-12.4) were examined to recover oil from shale rocks. Reservoir core samples from Eagle Ford shale were used in this study. The samples were 2.54 to 3.81 cm in diameter and 0.762 to 5.08 cm in length. Firstly, we studied the porosity of the used samples using CT Scanning. The average porosity was 1.6% for Eagle Ford shale samples. Secondly, we studied the rock stability and spontaneous imbibtion of the different Eagle Ford samples in distilled water, 2 wt% KCl, low pH solutions (0.74-1.2), and high pH alkaline solutions (11.7-12.4). During the spontaneous imbibition, the maximum oil recovery was 37% for Eagle Ford using pH 0.74 (3 wt% HCl in 2 wt% KCl) and 44% using pH 11.7 (0.1 wt% NaOH in distilled water). The oil recovery was improved by mineral dissolution using low and high pH solutions along with wettability alteration. The rock hardness was significantly affected by using both high and low pH solutions, which resulted in 93-98% loss of its initial value.