Tight oil is an important and potential reservoir in future China. Drawn from the successful exploration of tight oil in North America, tight oil exploration is now in progress in China. In this paper, we surveyed the tight oil exploration status and challenges, as well as the tight reservoir properties in China, including source rocks, lithology, physical properties and pressure coefficient. The process of pilot test and key technologies are analyzed, while it is still urgent to improve tight oil study and the production mode. We concluded that there are 4 aspects, which are geological features, energy supplement for formation, engineering and technical management innovation, should be improved, and national policy support for tight oil is another key point for successful exploration.

This paper presents the results of an analytical model for the capillary rise in nano-channels considering the effect of inherent surface roughness. The model was derived using the classical Lucas-Washburn model and the momentum conservation equation, while considering the inherent surface roughness of an equivalent porous medium layer (PML). The calculated frictional resistance due to the PML reflects the friction of fluid flowing through nano-channels. The capillary imbibition in the nano-channels is in the range of low-Reynolds-number flow, and because of its low flow-rate, the inertia force can be ignored in this study. This analytical model was validated by comparing it with nano-capillary rise experiments and other simulated values such as the classical Lucas-Washburn (LW) model and the classical LW model with a 40% fluid viscosity increment. The analytical model produces the closest results to those obtained in the experiments, and it can explain the lower-than-expected (using the LW equation) height of capillary rise obtained in the experiments.

With the rapid growth of energy consumption, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods are continually emerging, the most effective and widely used was polymer flooding. However, the shortcomings were gradually exposed. A novel decorated polyacrylamide might be a better alternative than polymer. In this work, the molecular structure and the properties reflecting the viscosity of decorated polyacrylamide, interfacial tension, and emulsification were examined. In order to better understand the interactions between decorated polyacrylamide and oil as well as the displacement mechanism, the displacement experiment were conducted in the etched-glass microscale model. Moreover, the coreflooding comparison experiments between decorated polyacrylamide and polymer were performed to investigate the displacement effect. The statistical analysis showed that the decorated polyacrylamide has excellent characteristics of salt tolerance, viscosity stability, and viscosification like polymer. Besides, the ability to reduce the interfacial tension in order 10⁻¹ and emulsification, which were more similar to surfactant. Therefore, the decorated polyacrylamide was a multifunctional polymer. The displacement process captured by camera illustrated that the decorated polyacrylamide flooded oil mainly by means of ‘pull and drag’, ‘entrainment’, and ‘bridging’, based on the mechanism of viscosifying, emulsifying, and viscoelasticity. The results of the coreflooding experiment indicated that the recovery of decorated polyacrylamide can be improved by approximately 11–16% after water flooding when the concentration was more than 800 mg/L, which was higher than that of conventional polymer flooding. It should be mentioned that a new injection mode of ‘concentration reduction multi-slug’ was first proposed, and it obtained an exciting result of increasing oil production and decreasing water-cut, the effect of conformance control was more significant.

The development effect of water flooding in an ultra-low permeability reservoir is poor due to its poor physical properties and high shale content, so an experimental study of air flooding which helps to complement energy production was carried out. Based on the Accelerating Rate Calorimeter experimental results, the crude oil of N block in L oilfield can undergo low-temperature oxidation reactions, which are the basic condition for air flooding. Three groups of experimental natural cylinder cores designed for oil displacement, water flooding and air flooding were used respectively, and the relationship between differential pressure, oil recovery, injection capacity with injection volume was investigated. It is observed that the recovery efficiency increased 2.58%, the injection-production pressure difference dropped 60% and the injection capability increased 60% in the experiment of shifting air flooding after water flooding to 75% moisture content, compared with water flooding alone. It has been shown in the results that the recovery efficiency improved sharply more than water flooding, the effect of depressurization and augmented injection was obvious, and the air displacement was thus validated. We suggest that other science and technology workers should perform further tests and verify this result through numerical simulation.