Mechanistic simulation study of expanding-solvent steam-assisted gravity drainage under reservoir heterogeneity

Venkatramani, Arun Venkat; Okuno, Ryosuke

doi:10.1016/j.petrol.2018.04.074

Cited by 27 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The effect of reservoir heterogeneities on the SOR was numerically investigated by Venkatramani and Okuno [25]. They observed that the dilution of bitumen by solvent is more significant in reservoirs that contains permeability barriers that limit the flow in a SAGD process.…”

Section: Vapor Extraction (Vapex)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Analytical Modeling of the Cyclic ES-SAGD Process

Jaimes

Clarke

2020

Energies

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Approximately half of the daily oil production from the Canadian oil sands comes from the application of steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). Due to the high steam requirements of SAGD, many studies have focused on solvent injection as a means of reducing the steam consumption. One of the multiple variations of the steam-solvent injection process consists on the intermittent co-injection of solvent with steam, also known as a cyclic expanding-solvent (ES)-SAGD process. The current study represents a first attempt to create an analytical model that can describe a cyclic ES-SAGD process. The proposed analytical model uses previous SAGD and ES-SAGD models to describe the steam plus solvent stages of the process. The results obtained from the analytical model were contrasted against numerical simulation results for cases in which the solvent was hexane, pentane, and butane, as well as for cases in which hexane is a solvent and the injection cycle length is variable. In all cases, it was seen that the cumulative oil production computed by the analytical model and the numerical model are in good agreement. Over the range of conditions that were tested the absolute relative difference in the cumulative oil production, after a period of 10 years, ranged from 8.6% to 9.4%, with a median value of 9%. However, compared to the numerical simulations, the analytical model did not fully match the oil rate and the steam chamber shape. This difference was attributed to the analytical model’s simplified description of heat and mass transfer during the process. Thus, it is recommended that further studies be conducted, and recommendations for further investigations are given.

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Section: Vapor Extraction (Vapex)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Analytical Modeling of the Cyclic ES-SAGD Process

Jaimes

Clarke

2020

Energies

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“… 25 However, very few studies are available regarding the impact of shales on ES-SAGD performance. 26 − 29 A major industry standard to assess the performance of SAGD and ES-SAGD is the steam oil ratio (SOR). The conventional range of the SOR for an efficient SAGD process in a homogeneous reservoir tends to fall between 2 and 3.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various studies have been done to demonstrate the impact of shale barriers on SAGD performance. − Kumar and Hassanzadeh have presented a detailed literature review on the impact of shale barriers on SAGD and ES-SAGD . However, very few studies are available regarding the impact of shales on ES-SAGD performance. − A major industry standard to assess the performance of SAGD and ES-SAGD is the steam oil ratio (SOR). The conventional range of the SOR for an efficient SAGD process in a homogeneous reservoir tends to fall between 2 and 3.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bitumen Recovery Performance of SAGD and Butane- and Hexane-Aided SAGD in the Presence of Shale Barriers

Kumar

2022

ACS Omega

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Oil and gas formations are commonly found to be heterogeneous, and one of the most common occurrences of reservoir heterogeneity is the presence of shale barriers. Shale barriers typically have very low permeability and high initial water saturation. Due to low permeability, these barriers obstruct the oil drainage path, specifically in thermal recovery methods such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). In addition to flow assistance, they also lead to heat losses due to absorption by the high initial water saturation. Expanding solvent steam-assisted gravity drainage (ES-SAGD) is a hybrid technique comprising solvent co-injection along with steam. Solvent being in the vapor phase can potentially overcome the restricted path due to the presence of shale barriers. This paper presents a numerical simulation study on comparison between SAGD and ES-SAGD in the presence of shale barriers. SAGD and ES-SAGD with hexane and butane are numerically simulated for 240 lognormally generated shale realizations. First, both recovery processes are analyzed over the whole simulation period. Additionally, they have also been evaluated at multiple cumulative steam oil ratio cut-offs at 2, 2.5, 3, and 3.5. Transition points are defined and explained to cluster the shale density/fractions based on similar behaviors. It was shown that the oil that cannot be mobilized and produced by SAGD because shale barriers can be reached by the vaporized solvent through tortuous paths and recovered. Also, thermal losses are reduced because of lower steam chamber temperature. This led to efficient results for ES-SAGD over SAGD in heterogeneous formations.

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“…These thermal effects are typically not applied uniformly to the whole reservoir, usually resulting in several temperature-fluid flow regions. 5 − 7 When steam flooding is applied to reservoirs with different characteristics, the relative importance of the EOR mechanisms changes. 8 It is evident that oil viscosity reduction is a dominating factor for heavy oil recovery, which significantly increases the oil mobility in the improved reservoir conditions; 9 , 10 in contrast, for light oil reservoirs, thermal expansion and distillation are of greater importance than other EOR mechanisms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pattern Recognition for Steam Flooding Field Applications Based on Hierarchical Clustering and Principal Component Analysis

et al. 2022

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Steam flooding is a complex process that has been considered as an effective enhanced oil recovery technique in both heavy oil and light oil reservoirs. Many studies have been conducted on different sets of steam flooding projects using the conventional data analysis methods, while the implementation of machine learning algorithms to find the hidden patterns is rarely found. In this study, a hierarchical clustering algorithm (HCA) coupled with principal component analysis is used to analyze the steam flooding projects worldwide. The goal of this research is to group similar steam flooding projects into the same cluster so that valuable operational design experiences and production performance from the analogue cases can be referenced for decision-making. Besides, hidden patterns embedded in steam flooding applications can be revealed based on data characteristics of each cluster for different reservoir/fluid conditions. In this research, principal component analysis is applied to project original data to a new feature space, which finds two principal components to represent the eight reservoir/fluid parameters (8D) but still retain about 90% of the variance. HCA is implemented with the optimized design of five clusters, Euclidean distance, and Ward’s linkage method. The results of the hierarchical clustering depict that each cluster detects a unique range of each property, and the analogue cases present that fields under similar reservoir/fluid conditions could share similar operational design and production performance.

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Mechanistic simulation study of expanding-solvent steam-assisted gravity drainage under reservoir heterogeneity

Cited by 27 publications

References 35 publications

Analytical Modeling of the Cyclic ES-SAGD Process

Analytical Modeling of the Cyclic ES-SAGD Process

Bitumen Recovery Performance of SAGD and Butane- and Hexane-Aided SAGD in the Presence of Shale Barriers

Pattern Recognition for Steam Flooding Field Applications Based on Hierarchical Clustering and Principal Component Analysis

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