Cold Production of Thin-bedded Heavy Oil Reservoir in Henan Oilfield

Alvarellos

Latin American &Amp; Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference

et al. 2007

fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractMost of heavy and extra heavy crude oil reservoirs in Venezuela are non-consolidated sand deposits. Venezuelan oil industry has a great interest to produce these reserves. Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS) is an alternative for the primary production of some of these deposits; in particular those where other technologies are not applicable (i.e. sands with thicknesses are less than 10 m). In general, at field level, the application of the CHOPS has been successful around the world. In particular, it has experienced great development in Canada, China and United States. The physical and numerical studies show that change in the production rates, implies cavities formation and/or erosion zones near to the well that increase reservoir permeability. In Venezuela, experience in this technology does not exist. Furthermore, the bibliographical review demonstrates that many doubts still exist on the production mechanisms. It is the reason why this work considers the design, construction and evaluation of a sand production physical model. The main objective is to study the physical processes and to evaluate the influence of different variables like pressure, flow rate, among others, in the sand production mechanisms. The obtained data, will allow the development of models to predict reservoir behavior and its properties evolution in time. This physical model is set up with a cylindrical disc, 50 cm diameter and 20 cm thickness. Cylindrical geometry guarantees radial flow. The model is instrumented with sensors to measure pressures (injection, production and pores fluid) and fluid samples are taken to quantify total sand produced. The assembly system provides facilities to apply vertical stress. Ultrasonic wave velocity measurement is used to locate erosion zones. All data is collected by a Labview card and it is processed digitally in the computer in real time. This work shows results for a preliminary test with water and mineral oil used as fluids and calibrated glass bets as the porous media. The results prove that this system can be used to study sand production mechanism but it cannot be scale up to reservoir conditions. However the results will be used to validate numerical models.

“…Excellent results are presented regarding CHOPS well production [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] . However, it is also known that not all CHOPS applications have been successful.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical Model Development To Study Sand Production

Alvarellos

Latin American &Amp; Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference

et al. 2007

Quantification of Methane Emissions from Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand Extraction in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada

Han,

Liggio,

Narayan

et al. 2024

Environ. Sci. Technol.

Cold heavy oil production with sand (CHOPS) is an extraction process for heavy oil in Canada, with the potential to lead to higher CH 4 venting than conventional oil sites, that have not been adequately characterized. In order to quantify CH 4 emissions from CHOPS activities, a focused aerial measurement campaign was conducted in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in June 2018. Total CH 4 emissions from each of 10 clusters of CHOPS wells (containing 22−167 well sites per cluster) were derived using a mass balance computation algorithm that uses in situ wind data measurement on board aircraft. Results show that there is no statistically significant difference in CH 4 emissions from CHOPS wells between the two provinces. Cluster-aggregated emission factors (EF) were determined using correspondingly aggregated production volumes. The average CH 4 EF was 70.4 ± 36.9 kg/m 3 produced oil for the Alberta wells and 55.1 ± 13.7 kg/m 3 produced oil for the Saskatchewan wells. Using these EF and heavy oil production volumes reported to provincial regulators, the annual CH 4 emissions from CHOPS were estimated to be 121% larger than CHOPS emissions extracted from Canada's National Inventory Report (NIR) for Saskatchewan. The EF were found to be positively correlated with the percentage of nonpiped production volumes in each cluster, indicating higher emissions for nonpiped wells while suggesting an avenue for methane emission reductions. A comparison with recent measurements indicates relatively limited effectiveness of regulations for Saskatchewan compared to those in Alberta. The results of this study indicate the substantial contribution of CHOPS operations to the underreporting observed in the NIR and provide measurement-based EF that can be used to develop improved emissions inventories for this sector and mitigate CH 4 emissions from CHOPS operations.

SPE Western Regional Meeting

Optimization of Steamflooding Heavy Oil Reservoirs

Suhag

Ranjith

Balaji

et al. 2017

Conformance improvement is the key to success in most enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes including CO2 flooding and steamflooding. In spite of technical and economic limitations, foam has been used as dispersions of microgas bubbles in the reservoir to enhance mobility. Steam-foam has numerous applications in the industry, including heavy oil reservoirs, which are a significant part of the future energy supply. Steam-foam applications have been used to prevent steam channeling and steam override, thus improving overall sweep efficiency, in both continuous steam and cyclic steam injection processes. The objective of this study is to investigate the key components of this complex process, where relatively high temperatures are recorded, in order to have a robust understanding of chemistry and the thermal stability of surfactants. The efficiency and therefore economics of the steam-foam process are strongly reliant on surfactant adsorption and retention. This requires a good understanding of the process for effective sizing of the foam injected. In this study, a commercial reservoir simulator is used where surfactant transport is modeled with surfactant availability and is determined by a combination of surfactant adsorption, surfactant thermal decomposition, and oil partitioning due to temperature. The degree of mobility decrease is interpolated as a result of factors that contain aqueous surfactant kind and concentration, the presence of an oil phase, and the capillary number. An empirical foam modeling method is employed with foam mobility decrease treated by means of modified gas relative permeability curves. The simulation results outline the sensitivity of these parameters and controlling agents, providing a better understanding of the influence of surfactant adsorption and thus, a number of chemicals to be used in an efficient manner. Optimum values for decision parameters that we have control on have been determined by coupling a commercial optimization software with the reservoir simulator. Uncertainty parameters such as surfactant adsorption have been analyzed in terms of significance on the recovery process. Even though steamflooding is thoroughly studied in the literature, there is no recent in-depth study that not only investigates the decision parameters but also uncertainty variables via a robust coupling of a reservoir simulator and an optimization/uncertainty software that model use of foam in steamflooding. This study aims to fill this gap by outlining the optimization workflow, the comparison of parameters with tornado charts and providing useful information for the industry.