oa Unlocking the Potential of Carbonate Reservoirs through Petroleum Geochemistry and Acid Stimulation

Approximately 50% of world's hydrocarbon resources lay in carbonate reservoirs. The main challenges involved in producing them are their natural complexity and strong geological heterogeneities. To help reducing these uncertainties, Total Research Center in Qatar (TRC-Q), as QSTP member, conducts research around two important activities, namely, acid stimulation and petroleum geochemistry.

Acid Stimulation: Matrix Acid Stimulation is a technique used to increase production from Oil and Gas wells by injecting acid that creates wormholes at the reservoir-wellbore interface. Targeted wells are in carbonate reservoirs from Qatar and the Middle East.

To help improving its expertise and that of its partners, TRC-Q runs a research project using Total Group's expertise along with testing facilities, and collaboration with local partners. The testing activities focus mainly on coreflooding with live acids in reservoir conditions. Experimental results help to select acid recipes, elaborate engineering design and feed simulation tools. The final objective is to transfer operational guidelines to local partners thanks to better insights in carbonate acidising.

Experiments have started with acid core-flooding tests. Results show the respective ability of various acid recipes to stimulate rock samples with different permeabilities.

Petroleum Geochemistry: Petroleum geochemistry plays an important role in many areas of hydrocarbons’ exploration and production. An important aspect of reservoir management consists of inferring the geological continuity within a reservoir to help the placement of additional wells. Determination of reservoir continuity, commingling of hydrocarbons from different sources and production allocation are possible by using different petroleum geochemical techniques known as Hydrocarbon Fingerprinting.

TRC-Q leading edge research provides high-end analytical expertise in petroleum geochemistry. TRC-Q laboratories have installed state-of-the-art analytical instruments capable of precision measurements in chromatography of liquid and gaseous samples as well as stable isotopes in solid, liquid and gaseous samples. With both research and industry applications, the new laboratories provide an excellent environment for all petroleum geochemistry needs, especially, but not only, hydrocarbon fingerprinting, to differentiate samples derived from different producing horizons.

Both acid stimulation and geochemistry labs are also used to train and develop local staff on these important petroleum technologies.