SAGD and Geomechanics

Carlson, M.R.

doi:10.2118/03-06-das

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…SAGD has been recognized as the most popular and efficient method in the ultra-heavy oil recovery and has achieved great successes in Alberta, Canada and Xinjiang, China. The use of geomechanics in enhancing the SAGD process has drawn widespread attention and resulted in extensive research, technical discussions and field applications, mostly focusing on the Alberta oil sand (e.g., Morgenstern 1977, 1979;Carlson 2003;Chalaturnyk et al 1997;Chalaturnyk and Li 2004;Collins 2005;Ito 2004;Yuan et al 2011a), while the Xinjiang oil sand is rarely discussed (e.g., Yuan et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Morgenstern (1977, 1979) pioneered the investigation on the dilative behavior of the Alberta oil sands through a series of triaxial, shear-box and SEM tests, revealing the failure envelopes and dilative rates of oil sands sampled from various formations. Later on, several researchers (Agar et al 1983;Oldakowski 1994;Samieh 1995;Touhidi-Baghini 1998;Carlson 2003;Li and Chalaturnyk 2005) performed triaxial tests on the Alberta oil sands to examine the impact of pore pressure, confining stress and the type of stress path on the degree of shear dilation. They observed a distinct enhancement of shear dilation with either an increase in pore pressure or a decrease in confining stress.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Experimental Investigation on Dilation Mechanisms of Land-Facies Karamay Oil Sand Reservoirs under Water Injection

et al. 2015

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The success of steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is strongly dependent on the formation of a homogeneous and highly permeable zone in the land-facies Karamay oil sand reservoirs. To accomplish this, hydraulic fracturing is applied through controlled water injection to a pair of horizontal wells to create a dilation zone between the dual wells. The mechanical response of the reservoirs during this injection process, however, has remained unclear for the land-facies oil sand that has a loosely packed structure. This research conducted triaxial, permeability and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) tests on the field-collected oil sand samples. The tests evaluated the influences of the field temperature, confining stress and injection pressure on the dilation mechanisms as shear dilation and tensile parting during injection. To account for petrophysical heterogeneity, five reservoir rocks including regular oil sand, mud-rich oil sand, bitumen-rich oil sand, mudstone and sandstone were investigated. It was found that the permeability evolution in the oil sand samples subjected to shear dilation closely followed the porosity and microcrack evolutions in the shear bands. In contrast, the mudstone and sandstone samples developed distinct shear planes, which formed preferred permeation paths. Tensile parting expanded the pore space and increased the permeability of all the samples in various degrees. Based on this analysis, it is concluded that the range of injection propagation in the pay zone determines the overall quality of hydraulic fracturing, while the injection pressure must be carefully controlled. A region in a reservoir has little dilation upon injection if it remains unsaturated. Moreover, a cooling of the injected water can strengthen the dilation potential of a reservoir. Finally, it is suggested that the numerical modeling of water injection in the Karamay oil sand reservoirs must take into account the volumetric plastic strain in hydrostatic loading.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Investigation on Dilation Mechanisms of Land-Facies Karamay Oil Sand Reservoirs under Water Injection

et al. 2015

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“…The tested permeability data is shown in Figure 3, and the permeability improvement induced by shear dilation is calculated and shown in Table 2 Figure 9: 3D evolutions of the shear dilation and permeability improvement capability/potential. 10 Geofluids above was used to compare with the predicted results shown in Figures 8 and 10. Both the SDC and PIC derived from experiments and models were compared, respectively.…”

Section: Triaxial Compression and Permeability Test Results Of Karamamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to equation (10), if the initial arrangement angle changes from α 0 to α due to shear dilation, the permeability improvement capability can be obtained by…”

Section: Geofluidsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The important features are the dilatant behavior of oil sands associated with volumetric strain and the change of fluid transport properties (e.g., the porosity and permeability as a function of effective stress and sand failure) [9]. The porosity and permeability increase due to dilation is the primary mechanism for fluid injectivity [9][10][11]. The fact that dilatant behavior is observed even at 8 MPa effective confining stress is indicative of the influence of the locked sand grain structure [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evaluation of Shear Dilation Capability/Potential and Permeability Changes in Karamay Oil Sands under Water Injection

et al. 2019

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Water injection can effectively improve the reservoir porosity and permeability by shear dilation in the vicinity of wellbores. In this paper, shear dilation and permeability improvement capability/potential are proposed to describe the evolutions of porosity and permeability under water injection-induced shear. The mathematical models based on Karamay oil sand microstructures derived from ESEM (environmental scanning electron microscope) are established to predict the shear dilation effects based on the particle packing theory. Triaxial compression and permeability experiments are conducted to validate the theoretical models, and the experimental data is consistent with model results. Also, the study compares shear dilation capabilities evaluated from three scales: ESEM (μm), laboratory triaxial compression tests (cm), and field injection tests (m). Major conclusions through an application on the wellpair A-2 in area A of the Karamay oil field showed that the oil sands have an excellent shear dilation potential. The larger arrangement angle results in stronger shear dilation and permeability, which means a lower arrangement angle provides a higher potential for improvement. The shear dilation capabilities predicted by ESEM, triaxial compression experiments, and field injection data descend in turn, which indicates that the actual shear dilation capability is difficult to be utilized by present field operations.

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Fully coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical model with strain-dependent properties for numerical simulation of heavy oil production

Shi,

Shen,

Zhang

et al. 2024

Case Studies in Thermal Engineering

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SAGD and Geomechanics

Cited by 16 publications

References 13 publications

Experimental Investigation on Dilation Mechanisms of Land-Facies Karamay Oil Sand Reservoirs under Water Injection

Experimental Investigation on Dilation Mechanisms of Land-Facies Karamay Oil Sand Reservoirs under Water Injection

Evaluation of Shear Dilation Capability/Potential and Permeability Changes in Karamay Oil Sands under Water Injection

Fully coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical model with strain-dependent properties for numerical simulation of heavy oil production

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