Optimizing the development strategy of combined steam flooding & cyclic steam stimulation for enhanced heavy oil recovery through reservoir proxy modeling

Abstract

Thermal injection methods are usually used for high viscosity oil. The results of previous studies showed that the combination of SF and SFF had the highest increase in oil recovery but still requires further study to determine the optimum strategy. This work is purposed to optimize the development scenario of a combined CSS-SF applied to a heavy oil field located in Sumatera, Indonesia. The recovery factor and NPV become the objective function, and several given and controlled parameters sensitivity toward the objective function are studied. A proxy model based on quadratic multivariate regression is developed to evaluate and get the desired objective function. The reservoir simulation of the thermal recovery process is done using CMG-STARS simulator. The overall workflow of scenario optimization is conducted using CMOST™ module. Optimum development scenario is obtained through maximization of the objective function. This work shows that the combination of proxy model development and optimization results in the best scenario of combined CSS-SF for heavy oil recovery.

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

“…After heavy oil steam discharge, the reservoir deficit is large, and the distributions of temperature, pressure, and permeability between the wells are uneven [7][8][9][10][11][12]. Steam channeling or water channeling rapidly advances along the direction of high permeability to form a channel in the high-permeability layer, which intensifies the contrast between the high-and low-permeability layers [13]. The injected high-temperature steam or hot water breaks through the high-permeability layer, leading to the loss of a large amount of steam or hot water.…”