Modelling the effect of wettability distributions on oil recovery from microporous carbonate reservoirs

Carbonate-hosted hydrocarbon reservoirs are known to be weakly- to moderately oil-wet, but the pore-scale wettability distribution is poorly understood. Moreover, micropores, which often dominate in carbonate reservoirs, are usually assumed to be water-wet and their role in multi-phase flow is neglected. Modelling the wettability of carbonates using pore network models is challenging, because of our inability to attribute appropriate chemical characteristics to the pore surfaces and over-simplification of the pore shapes. Here, we implement a qualitatively plausible wettability alteration scenario in a two-phase flow network model that captures a diversity of pore shapes. The model qualitatively reproduces patterns of wettability alteration recently observed in microporous carbonates via high-resolution imaging. To assess the combined importance of pore-space structure and wettability on petrophysical properties, we consider a homogeneous Berea sandstone network and a heterogeneous microporous carbonate network, whose disconnected coarse-scale pores are connected through a sub-network of fine-scale pores. Results demonstrate that wettability effects are significantly more profound in the carbonate network, as the wettability state of the micropores controls the oil recovery.