Investigation of Foam Injection Scenarios to Control the Gas Oil Ratio in Carbonate Reservoirs with Permeability Heterogeneity: Simulation of the Process in an Oil Reservoir Sector

In this study, foam is used to treat production wells of heterogeneous reservoirs that produce high amounts of gas. For this purpose, a numerical simulation study is designed in which foam is injected through the perforations that produce large amounts of gas to block the gas path and allow much more oil to be produced simultaneously from the rest of the perforations. For this purpose, three synthetic sectors are simulated in such a way that in the first one a large volume of injected gas is produced from the upper perforations of the production well, in the second one from the middle perforations and in the third one from the lower perforations. Then, in each of these three sectors, foam injection rate and treatment scenarios are optimized. The results show that the location of gas entry to the production well, which depends on the reservoir heterogeneity, plays a key role in selection of the best treatment scenario and optimal parameters. This has led to introduce a protocol for treatment of production wells with a high amount of gas oil ratio (GOR). Finally, in order to validate this protocol, a real sector of a heterogeneous carbonate reservoir located in south of Iran that has high amounts of GOR is simulated and by following the protocol, foam injection parameters including foam injection rate, treatment scenarios, foam injection/oil production sequence and the depth of packer set are optimized and treated which reduced the GOR by 60%.