Mechanisms of Mobility Control and Enhanced Oil Recovery of Weak Gels in Heterogeneous Reservoirs

At present, most oilfields in China have entered the late, high-water-cut stage, commonly facing declining single-well productivity and increasingly pronounced reservoir heterogeneity. Prolonged waterflooding has further exacerbated permeability contrast, yielding complex, hard-to-produce residual-oil distributions. Accordingly, the development of efficient enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies has become a strategic priority and an urgent research focus in oil and gas field development. Weak gels, typical non-Newtonian fluids, exhibit both viscous and elastic responses, and their distinctive rheology shows broad application potential for crude oil extraction in porous media. Targeting medium-high-permeability reservoirs with high water cut, this study optimized and evaluated a weak gel system. Experimental results demonstrate that the optimized weak gel system achieves remarkable oil displacement performance. The one-dimensional dual-sandpack flooding tests yielded a total recovery of 72.26%, with the weak gel flooding stage contributing an incremental recovery of 14.52%. In the physical three-dimensional model experiments, the total recovery reached 46.12%, of which the weak gel flooding phase accounted for 16.36%. Through one-dimensional sandpack flow experiments and three-dimensional physical model simulations, the oil displacement mechanisms and synergistic effects of the optimized system in heterogeneous reservoirs were systematically elucidated from macro to micro scales. The optimized system demonstrates integrated synergistic performance during flooding, effectively combining mobility control, displacement, and oil-washing mechanisms. Macroscopically, it effectively strips residual oil in high-permeability zones via viscosity enhancement and viscoelastic effects, efficiently blocks high-permeability channels, diverts flow to medium-permeability regions, and enhances macroscopic sweep efficiency. Microscopically, it mobilizes residual oil via normal stress action and a filamentous transport mechanism, improving oil-washing efficiency and increasing ultimate oil recovery. This study demonstrates the technical feasibility and practical effectiveness of the optimized weak gel system for enhancing oil recovery in heterogeneous reservoirs, providing critical technical support for the efficient development of medium-high-permeability reservoirs with high water cut.