The necessity of taking into account rock wettabilty changes in thermal oil recovery methods simulation
Possibility of rock wettability changes as a result of using thermal methods of development is considered based on a brief literature review. Brief summary of experimentally obtained rocks wettability changes with temperature increase are presented. Carbonates become more water-wet with temperature increase while experimental results for terrigenous formations are quite ambiguous. On the base of simple computer modelling it is shown that the production history might be improved by wettability changes (in oil-wet rocks) or made worse (in water-wet rocks).A thorough investigation of the problem is proposed under thermobaric conditions of Russian oil fields with viscous oils on which thermal methods are planned to be applied. This is necessary to increase reservoir modeling reliability.