Application status and research progress of CO₂ fracturing fluid in petroleum engineering: A brief review

Abstract

This paper comprehensively reviews the application and research progress of CO₂ fracturing fluids in China, highlights the existing issues and puts forward suggestions for future development. Three types of fracturing fluid systems containing CO₂, namely, CO₂ dry fracturing fluid, CO₂ energized fracturing fluid, and CO₂ foam fracturing fluid, are categorized based on the mass ratio and process difference between CO₂, water, and treatment agents. Field applications in China reveal several problem to be resolved: (1) The application scope of CO₂ fracturing fluids is restricted to depleted reservoirs, re-fracturing of old wells, and medium-deep reservoirs with low formation pressure coefficients; (2) different types of CO₂ fracturing fluids require different processes and ground supporting equipment; (3) optimization of CO₂ compatibility, functionality, temperature and salt tolerance, as well as the cost of treatment agents is necessitated; (4) existing CO₂ fracturing fluid system fail to perform well with low friction, low filtration, and high sand-carrying capacity. (5) there lacks a targeted industry standard for evaluation of performance of CO₂ fracturing fluid system and treatment agents. Therefore, in order to meet the goals of CCUS-EOR, CCUS-EGR, or integration of fracturing, displacement and burial by CO₂, efforts should be made in the aspects that followed, including in-depth investigation of the mechanism of CO₂ fracturing fluids, the adaptability and compatibility between existing equipment, different CO₂ fracturing fluid systems and processes, and construction of treatment agents, low-density proppants and high-performance systems of recyclability and industrial-grade. In addition, optimization of CO₂ fracturing fluid system based fracturing design is also crucial taking such related factors such as overall reservoir geological conditions, petrophysical properties, CO₂ transportation, and well site layout into consideration.

Keywords

Reservoir reconstruction / CO₂ fracturing fluid / Fracturing fluid system / Fracturing displacement burial integration

Declaration of competing interest

No conflict of interest exits in the submission of this manuscript, and all authors for publication approve manuscript. I would like to declare on behalf of my co-authors that the work described was original research that has not been published previously, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere, in whole or in part. All the authors listed have approved the manuscript that is enclosed.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for financial support for this work from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No, U21B2071). The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

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