Effect of Oil Price on Carbon Dioxide Flooding of a Marginal Well

Abstract The effects of oil price on the production of oil wells cannot be overstated especially in Nigeria where many wells are currently being termed marginal wells by the NUPRC and cannot be produced with primary recovery and soon enough even secondary recovery won't be enough to economically produce oil. This work aims to check the economic viability of CO2-enhanced oil recovery on marginal wells at different oil prices (current, high, and low). Using Eclipse software, CO2 injection in a marginal well was simulated. The resulting production data was put in an economical model at the three different oil prices and the breakeven oil price was found to be $48.59. A Monte Carlo risk analysis was carried out with 1000 iterations of randomly generated oil prices resulting in an average NPV of $364.84MM, the cash at risk of 95% resulted in $557.09MM and the probability of breaking even at the current fiscal regime and operating expenditure was 89%. A sensitivity analysis on the effect of certain parameters (Oil price, CO2 Cost, CAPEX, field OPEX) on the net present value was carried out to understand the components whose change would impact profitability the most, it was seen to be oil price. In conclusion, it was seen that while the oil price is the most crucial factor to be considered it is not the only factor, and as such cost-saving measures need to be applied in the field of OPEX. This work contributes to the existing work of the past by adding the use of CO2-enhanced oil recovery on a marginal well and checking its viability economically. However, further work can be done on this to improve the accuracy of the economic model.