New Thermal Recovery Technology and Technology Transfer for Successful Heavy Oil Development

Abstract

Continuous development and rapid deployment of new thermal technologies are critically important in the quest to make heavy oil projects cost competitive. Worldwide heavy oil deposits are abundant, but conventional development schemes may not be financially competitive. Currently, oil companies have a multitude of new investment opportunities, which further stresses required funds available for the continued development of new and existing heavy oil assets. How can heavy oil assets compete financially? New, cost effective technologies must be developed and deployed to improve the margins of heavy oil assets. An effective partnership must be maintained between the technology developers and the technology users to ensure a smooth transition from concept to field test to commercial application. The alignment of technology development to the real business needs is essential. This paper reviews a portfolio of new heavy oil technologies that Texaco is pursuing alone and in partnership with other companies. The processes used to assure business alignment, technology transfer, and deployment are also discussed. The heavy oil and thermal technology development portfolio includes novel steam generation, improved steam delivery (measurement and distribution), and aggressive heat management projects. These new surface and sub-surface heavy oil technologies will be discussed relative to the potential impact that they could have on several existing and new heavy oil fields. Heavy Oil Resources Heavy oil resources are abundant. In fact, heavy and extra heavy oil resources are estimated to be more than 2.5 trillion BO. The vast resources of the Orinoco and Canada extra heavy oil or bitumen regions are well documented1,2, and offer large targets for in-situ and surface development techniques. Potential recoverable heavy and extra-heavy is projected to be 856 MMBO with current technology.3 There is no shortage of heavy and extra heavy oil in the world today. The challenge is how to produce this resource profitably. An energy resource that will play a large role in our future. Thermal Recovery, The Current State-of-the-Art Thermal recovery continues to be an attractive means of maximizing the value and reserves from heavy oil assets. The successful application of thermal recovery techniques has maintained worldwide thermal production rates at 1.3 MMBOPD4–5, and Texaco's thermal operations represent a significant portion of the worldwide total. Texaco's vast steamflood operations centered in California and those of its affiliate PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia together produce approximately 450 MBOPD as shown in Fig. 1. Heavy oil assets, such as the Kern River field, demonstrate how important steamflood technology is to heavy oil recovery. Prior to the implementation of thermal operations, the Kern River field was producing approximately 10MBOPD. Following the fieldwide implementation of steamflooding, the Kern River field has produced in excess of 120MBOPD for the last two decades (Fig. 2). This is one of the true success stories for thermal recovery.

Unconventional Fossil Fuel Reservoirs and Water Resources

“…Technological advancements, however, have improved the ability of the oil and gas industry to access these resources. Some of these advancements include marked improvements in methods for measuring the thermal properties of rocks (Chekhonin et al, 2012) and the use of thermal analytic models to improve heat management (Greaser and Ortiz, 2001).…”

“…Steam production for thermal enhancement of heavy oil reservoirs is the largest cost in any thermal operation (Greaser and Ortiz, 2001) and represents a large sink of local water resources. Producers in California are estimated to use 560 million barrels of water per year for steam injection (ANL, 2008).…”

Optimization of the Plugging Agent Dosage for High Temperature Salt Profile Control in Heavy Oil Reservoirs

“…Heavy oil refers to crude oil with a viscosity greater than 50 mPa•s and a density greater than 0.92 g/cm 3 under reservoir conditions, thereby showing poor fluidity, high viscosity, and a high freezing point [3][4][5]. The extraction of heavy oil from reservoirs often requires the reduction of viscosity by increasing the reservoir temperature and improving the fluidity of the heavy oil [6]. Currently, mainstream heavy oil recovery technologies include steam stimulation, steam flooding, hot water flooding, and in-situ combustion.…”

Mesoscopic Study on Seepage Characteristics with Shear Displacement in a Single Fracture

“…The fluid in the fracture is threatened by serious pollution, such as nuclear waste infiltration (Spycher et al 2003;Pruess et al 2002;Martin et al 2015) and landfill sewage infiltration (Chen et al 2014;Fleming 2011;Simmons et al 2002). In addition, problems in the fields of geothermal extraction (Song et al 2018;Sui et al 2019;Wang et al 2018) and heavy oil thermal recovery (Zhao et al 2014;Greaser and Ortiz 2001;Babadagli et al 2010) also require exploring the mechanism of fracture seepage. The hydraulic characteristics in fractures are closely related to the roughness in fractures (Taylor et al 2006;Zou et al 2015;Bonaccurso et al 2003;Crandall et al 2010;Kandlikar et al 2003).…”