Fracture-caved oil carbonate reservoirs are the focus of the exploration and development of carbonate reservoirs in China. However, the connections and distributions of well, fracture, and cave create a significant heterogeneity in the fracture-caved carbonate oil reservoirs, and the fluid flow behavior in the complex fracture-caved porous media is extremely hard to characterize. In this work, a series of simple, efficient, and practically applicable pressure-transient models exhibiting complex distributions are established with linear flow in the fracture zones and storage flow in the caves. The solutions for fracture-caved models are obtained by the Laplace transformation, Duhamel principle, and Stehfest numerical inversion. Flow behavior analysis shows that the pressure-transient analysis model for fracture-caved reservoirs may develop four flow regimes: wellbore storage flow, fracture-zone linear flow, cave storage flow, and transition flow. The results indicate that the start and duration of the linear flow are affected by the conductivity and length of the fracture zone, respectively. A larger cave volume causes a deeper and wider V-shaped segment on the pressure derivative curve. The semianalytical pressure-transient models are applied to field cases in the Shunbei block. The key physical parameters (i.e., fracture length, fracture conductivity, and cave volume) can be estimated by matching with the actual pressure and production data.

Under the policy background and advocacy of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS), CO2-EOR has become a promising direction in the shale oil reservoir industry. The multi-scale pore structure distribution and fracture structure lead to complex multiphase flow, comprehensively considering multiple mechanisms is crucial for development and CO2 storage in fractured shale reservoirs. In this paper, a multi-mechanism coupled model is developed by MATLAB. Compared to the traditional Eclipse300 and MATLAB Reservoir Simulation Toolbox (MRST), this model considers the impact of pore structure on fluid phase behavior by the modified Peng–Robinson equation of state (PR-EOS), and the effect simultaneously radiate to Maxwell-Stefan (M–S) diffusion, stress sensitivity, the nano-confinement (N–C) effect. Moreover, a modified embedded discrete fracture model (EDFM) is used to model the complex fractures, which optimizes connection types and half-transmissibility calculation approaches between non-neighboring connections (NNCs). The full implicit equation adopts the finite volume method (FVM) and Newton–Raphson iteration for discretization and solution. The model verification with the ECLIPSE300 and MRST is satisfactory. The results show that the interaction between the mechanisms significantly affects the production performance and storage characteristics. The effect of molecular diffusion may be overestimated in oil-dominated (liquid-dominated) shale reservoirs. The well spacing and injection gas rate are the most crucial factors affecting the production by sensitivity analysis. Moreover, the potential gas invasion risk is mentioned. This model provides a reliable theoretical basis for CO2-EOR and sequestration in shale oil reservoirs.

Displacement-imbibition coupling oil production, which involves adjusting the operations of a well group (water injection huff and puff in one well, continuous oil production in another well), is an effective technique for enhancing oil recovery (EOR) for tight oil reservoirs. However, the research on displacement-imbibition coupling mechanisms is still missing, especially the combination of pore-scale numerical simulations and physical experiments. In this paper, a novel self-designed displacement-imbibition online nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiment technique is developed. The effect of changes in fracture morphology on the mechanism of displacement-imbibition (oil saturation field and oil displacement efficiency) has been investigated. Based on the fracture morphology of physical experiments, a pore-scale model is established and solved by the finite element method. The pore-scale oil-water two-phase displacement-imbibition during the injecting-shut in-production process is simulated. The results show that the pressure oscillation makes the counter-current imbibition and co-current imbibition occur simultaneously in the matrix pores, which promotes oil recovery in matrix-fracture systems. The strength of displacement and imbibition effects is affected by the complexity of fractures. When the fracture complexity increases, the imbibition of the dense part of the fracture is stronger, while the displacement effect is weakened.

An essential technology of carbon capture, utilization and storage-enhanced oil recovery (CCUS-EOR) for tight oil reservoirs is CO2 huff-puff followed by associated produced gas reinjection. In this paper, the effects of multi-component gas on the properties and components of tight oil are studied. First, the core displacement experiments using the CH4/CO2 multi-component gas are conducted to determine the oil displacement efficiency under different CO2 and CH4 ratios. Then, a viscometer and a liquid density balance are used to investigate the change characteristics of oil viscosity and density after multi-component gas displacement with different CO2 and CH4 ratios. In addition, a laboratory scale numerical model is established to validate the experimental results. Finally, a composition model of multi-stage fractured horizontal well in tight oil reservoir considering nano-confinement effects is established to investigate the effects of multi-component gas on the components of produced dead oil and formation crude oil. The experimental results show that the oil displacement efficiency of multi-component gas displacement is greater than that of single-component gas displacement. The CH4 decreases the viscosity and density of light oil, while CO2 decreases the viscosity but increases the density. And the numerical simulation results show that CO2 extracts more heavy components from the liquid phase into the vapor phase, while CH4 extracts more light components from the liquid phase into the vapor phase during cyclic gas injection. The multi-component gas can extract both the light components and the heavy components from oil, and the balanced production of each component can be achieved by using multi-component gas huff-puff.