Application of a Salt-Resistant In Situ Cross-Linked Terpolymer Gel for the Daqing Oilfield

Pubei Block, which is a subdivision of Daqing Oilfield, presents a challenging environment for conformance control due to its high temperature (average 80 °C) and salinity (13,451 mg/L), making it difficult for the polyacrylamide-based gel to maintain the necessary gel strength. To address this issue, this study aims to evaluate the feasibility of using a terpolymer in situ gel system that provides greater temperature and salinity resistance and pore adaptation. The terpolymer used here consists of acrylamide, acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid, and N,N'-dimethylacrylamide. We determined that a formula with a hydrolysis degree of 15.15%, a polymer concentration of 600 mg/L, and a polymer-cross-linker ratio of 2.8 yields the greatest gel strength. The hydrodynamic radius of the gel was found to be 0.39 μm, indicating no conflict with the pore and pore-throat sizes determined by the CT scan. In the core-scale evaluation, the gel treatment improved oil recovery by 19.88%, of which 9.23% was through gelant injection and 10.65% through post water injection. A pilot test began in 2019 and has continued for 36 months until now. Within this period, the oil recovery factor increased by 9.82%. The number is likely to keep going up until the water cut (so far 87.4%) reaches the economic limit.