A Minireview of the Influence of CO2 Injection on the Pore Structure of Reservoir Rocks: Advances and Outlook

The recoverable hydrocarbon reserves of conventional oil and gas resources are very limited in China. As important alternative resources, unconventional oil and gas have become a research hotspot. Though tight reservoirs have great potential to alleviate the increasing demand, issues during the development process, such as the rapid pressure depletion, fast decline in production, low productivity, and difficulties in water injection, are usually encountered due to poor physical properties like small pore throats and strong heterogeneity of the pore structure. The CO2 flooding technique could effectively replace crude oil from micronanopores, which is considered as a promising way to enhance the development performance of tight oil. However, precipitation and dissolution phenomena usually occur along with the CO2 injection process into reservoirs, affecting the pore structure evolution and oil displacement efficiency. In addition, artificial and natural fractures will even make this process more complicated. This paper presents the commonly used experimental approaches for CO2 injection into tight reservoirs and summarizes the main methods for investigating the influence of CO2 injection on the pore structure of reservoir rocks. Based on this, we highlighted that more attention should be paid to the influence of fractures and their dynamic changes on the evolution of pore structure during CO2 injection and the study of the solid-liquid interactions. To establish a method that could quantitatively evaluate the full-scale evolution of pore throats after CO2 injection is necessary. Meanwhile, the interaction strength of precipitation and dissolution and their effects on pore structure also remain open. Finally, a rigorous framework that could reveal the evolution mechanism and characterize the multiscale pore structure involving multiple influencing factors is urgently warranted.

Automated summary

The recoverable hydrocarbon reserves of conventional oil and gas resources are limited in China, making unconventional oil and gas an important research focus. Tight reservoirs have the potential to alleviate the increasing demand, but issues such as rapid pressure depletion and low productivity arise due to poor physical properties. CO2 flooding can enhance the development of tight oil, but precipitation and dissolution affect pore structure evolution and oil displacement efficiency. Attention should be focused on fractures, solid-liquid interactions, and the quantitative evaluation of pore structure evolution and interaction strength.