Chemical Flooding the Lansing-Kansas City Formation in Kansas

Mark Ballard

The Tertiary Oil Recovery Program at the University of Kansas in cooperation with the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (US DOE funded) and industry partners are presently designing a chemical flood for implementation in the Trembley Oilfield, Reno County, KS. The purpose of the project is to test and demonstrate the performance of chemical flooding. An overview of chemical flooding will be presented that will include the basics of the oil-recovery process and considerations for where it might be applied. A summary of the field project and the progress to-date will be reported. The chemical flood design covers laboratory testing to formulate a chemical system that achieves desired performance for the Trembley reservoir (oil, water and rock) and evaluation of the reservoir to design the field implementation. Results of both the laboratory work and the field evaluation will be presented. The Trembley Oilfield produces from a thin bed of oolitic grainstone in the Pennsylvanian Lansing-Kansas City (LKC) interval. Oil production was initially by fluid expansion and, like many LKC fields, it has been successfully waterflooded. The Trembley has favorable characteristics to be chemical flooded and good performance should lend promise to the application of chemical flooding of other LKC reservoirs. 

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90176©AAPG Mid-Continent Meeting, Wichita, Kansas, October 12-15, 2013