Application Prospects of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide in Unconventional Oil and Gas Reservoirs

The technical problems during the development of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs are becoming more and more difficult to handle with conventional drilling and production methods. Supercritical carbon dioxide has so many good properties such as high rock-breaking drilling efficiency, strong dissolved displacement performance and unharmful effect on the reservoir that it can be used as a drilling, completion and production medium to effectively exploit the unconventional oil and gas reservoirs. The global distribution of unconventional oil and gas resources is introduced, application status of carbon dioxide in oil and gas development is discussed, and development prospects of supercritical carbon dioxide in the unconventional oil and gas reservoirs are systematically analyzed. Using supercritical carbon dioxide as a medium in the whole development process is an important trend of unconventional oil and gas development technologies.