Modelling the effect of wettability distributions on oil recovery from microporous carbonate reservoirs

Carbonate-hosted hydrocarbon reservoirs are known to be weakly- to moderately oil-wet, but the pore scale wettability distribution is poorly understood. Moreover, micropores, which often dominate in carbonate reservoirs, are usually assumed to be water-wet and their role in multi-phase flow is neglected. Modelling the wettability of carbonates using pore network models is challenging, because of our inability to attribute appropriate chemical characteristics to the pore surfaces and over-simplification of the pore shapes. Here, we implement a qualitatively plausible wettability alteration scenario in a two-phase flow network model that captures a diversity of pore shapes. The model qualitatively reproduces patterns of wettability alteration recently observed in microporous carbonates via high-resolution imaging. To assess the combined importance of pore-space structure and wettability on petrophysical properties, we consider a homogeneous Berea sandstone network and a heterogeneous microporous carbonate network, whose disconnected coarse-scale pores are connected through a sub-network of fine-scale pores. Results demonstrate that wettability effects are significantly more profound in the carbonate network, as the wettability state of the micropores controls the oil recovery. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.