Numerical Modelling of Advanced In Situ Recovery Processes in Complex Heavy Oil and Bitumen Reservoirs

Card, Colin; Close, Jason; Collins, David; Sammon, Peter H.; Fortson, Noble G.; Wheeler, Thomas J.

doi:10.2118/2005-065-ea

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…One factor that may have constrained the results was the selection of a quite low, uniform permeability, of 1 Darcy. Card et al 2005, through their study of the in situ combustion process, have suggested (from experience) that the largest size of grid block that can be used in the vicinity of the combustion front is 2m x 2m, and preferably 1m x 1 m. Typically, this will require use of advanced processer options like CMG's 'DYNAGRID' and parallel processing, if very large computing times are to be avoided. In their design study for an in situ combustion pilot in Venezuela (Anaya, eta al 2010), the authors were able to use kinetic and relative permeability parameters from a combustion tube simulation, directly in the field pilot simulation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Upscaling THAI: Experiment to Pilot

2011

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Numerical simulation of the insitu combustion process is complicated by sharp gradients, with different temporal and special regimes applying to the reaction front and diffusional transport. It is not possible to achieve fine scale solutions at field scale in a reasonable time, owing to the onerous computer requirements. Instead, grid coarsening procedures were used. Simulation solutions were obtained for a homogeneous reservoir section of the THAI ® field pilot, near Conklin, Alberta, Canada. The reservoir model did not include an interbedded shale layer, or bottom water layer, and the study therefore represents a non-optimal, first stage simulation of the THAI process, prior to incorporating more reservoir complexities. The results show that the process is inherently stable over a six year operating period, since there was no oxygen in the produced gas. High temperatures are generated in the narrow combustion front zone (900 ºC) but 60 m ahead the temperature is 500 -600 ºC. Rapid desaturation of reservoir water takes place ahead of the combustion front, allowing combustion gases to enter into the colder bitumen layers, thereby creating some oil mobility. Of particular significance, is the existence of a narrow, high saturation, Steam Zone, extending to more than 15 m, and up to 30 m during later stages of production. The steam zone propagates at up three times faster than that of the combustion front. Also, the Mobile Oil Zone (MOZ) is very significant characteristic of the THAI process throughout the whole production period. However, the temperature in the MOZ, close to the horizontal producer well, is quite low, around 150-180 ºC. The oil recovery factor was approximately 60 % in the zone swept by the gas-steam front. Oil production peaked at 69 m³/day rate, averaging 350 barrrels per day for the single well pair.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Upscaling THAI: Experiment to Pilot

2011

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Bitumen and heavy oil geochemistry: a tool for distinguishing barriers from baffles in oil sands reservoirs

Fustic

Bennett²,

Adams

et al. 2011

Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology

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An Evaluation of Criteria for Dynamic Gridding during Reservoir Simulation of Water Flooding and Solvent Injection

Lavie

Kamp

2011

SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium

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Some hydrocarbon recovery processes are characterized by the existence of sharp saturation and/or concentration fronts. Examples of such processes are VAPEX, in situ combustion, or water flooding of heavy oil reservoirs in presence of viscous fingering. In order to simulate correctly what happens around the fronts, small grid sizes need to be used. If however the whole reservoir is gridded very finely, computational time becomes prohibitive. In order to circumvent this problem, dynamic gridding, also callled, automatic mesh refinement may be used. During the computation, the computational grid is adapted to the dynamics of the flow. This requires the use of an estimator in order to decide where to refine or to coarsen the grid. In this work we studied dynamic gridding for a water flooding problem. We implemented this problem using the mixed hybrid finite element method in 2-D on a triangular grid. The resulting code was validated by comparison to a commercial reservoir simulator. From literature, we adapted an a posteriori estimator that had been derived for incompressible flow, and we used this to refine our grid on each time step. We show that the grid refinement criterion captures relatively well the sharp saturation front. Heterogeneities are also well captured. The code is able to reproduce some tendencies of viscous fingering, although more time is required to avoid definitely the numerical disperion and dynamic gridding influence. This work is a preamble for a second work considering simulation of the VAPEX process using dynamic gridding. For this we decided to switch to the finite volume method, for which a second code was developed which is shortly mentionned in the perspectives. We think that dynamic gridding may be a solution that will allow the simulation of processes such as VAPEX and in situ combustion at reservoir scale, using effective grid refinement in the region of the front.

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Numerical Modelling of Advanced In Situ Recovery Processes in Complex Heavy Oil and Bitumen Reservoirs

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Upscaling THAI: Experiment to Pilot

Upscaling THAI: Experiment to Pilot

Bitumen and heavy oil geochemistry: a tool for distinguishing barriers from baffles in oil sands reservoirs

An Evaluation of Criteria for Dynamic Gridding during Reservoir Simulation of Water Flooding and Solvent Injection

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