Santos Basin’s Pre-Salt Reservoirs Development—The Way Ahead

Formigli, Jose; Pinto, Antonio Capeleiro; Almeida, Alberto Francisco Ribeiro de

doi:10.4043/otc-19953-ms

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Formigli et al 2 , 2009, described the main characteristics of this province. The geological structures were formed around 160 millions years ago, when the supercontinent Gondwana began to break apart, giving birth for the South American and African continents.…”

Section: The Santos Basin Pre-salt Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges in Implementing an EOR Project in the Pre-Salt Province in Deep Offshore Brasil

Pizarro

Branco

2012

All Days

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Carbonate reservoirs contain expressive part of the world oil reserves. The exploitation of these resources, however, presents several challenges mainly associated with their complex pore geometry, large scale variation in permeability and sometimes unfavorable wettability. These challenges can become more significant when we move to a deep offshore environment. As offshore projects need to be planned well in advance, due to the lack of room in the platforms for future expansion, the pioneer application of EOR methods needs to be considered from the conceptual stage of the development.This paper addresses the approach used to design the development basis for Lula field, formerly known as Tupi area, in the Pre-Salt Cluster (SBPSC) in Santos Basin, offshore Brazil. It focuses on the strategy of phased development, dynamic data acquisition and actions to add flexibility to the production system and how to manage uncertainties. A comprehensive analysis of the existing uncertainties, such as the reservoir characterization, early water and gas breakthrough, bypassed oil saturation, flow assurance in deep water flowlines and CaCO 3 scale possibility in production wells, favored a phased development concept aiming to mitigate risks.. The approach used to cope with these uncertainties in a Pilot Project as well as in the future development scenarios is presented. Most of the discussion is focused on how to consider feasible Enhanced Oil Recovery techniques through Pilot testing and future implementation in large scale in the field. It comprises the investigation of different recovery processes and first field results, including miscible processes using hydrocarbon gas and CO 2 . To optimize the oil displacement, a water alternating gas (WAG) injection process is also being designed.After one and a half year of extended well test production and the implementation of the first Pilot project in January, 2011, results confirm the decision of providing additional flexibility to the project. Dynamic appraisal proved essential to assess reservoir connectivity, evaluate stimulation methods, support reservoir characterization studies and define aspects related to flow in subsea lines. The first results of the injection of the CO 2 stream, separated from the associated gas in the Pilot project, indicate that the chosen strategy has potential to be a successful one. The continuing production and pressure data monitoring of the WAG implementation in the Pilot, from 2012 on, will provide a more definitive conclusion about the feasibility. Good responses will translate in the EOR expansion to field scale.

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Section: The Santos Basin Pre-salt Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges in Implementing an EOR Project in the Pre-Salt Province in Deep Offshore Brasil

Pizarro

Branco

2012

All Days

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“…Despite the success obtained, the company has to address specific challenges to ensure production from these fields including high content of CO 2 in produced fluids. The Lula field, for example, has CO 2 concentrations in the produced fluids of up to 12%, and therefore carbon dioxide must be removed during petroleum processing …”

Section: Why Brazil Invests In Ccsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…8.3 billion barrels. The petroleum reservoirs in the pre‐salt interval are mostly limestones, with light oil (28–30 API), with high gas content associated, including a CO 2 content of 8–12% …”

Section: Ccs Projects In the Pre‐salt Oil Fieldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon capture and geological storage in Brazil: an overview

et al. 2015

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Brazil is recognized for possessing a low carbon‐intensive energy matrix, with most of its power being generated from hydroelectricity. Its greenhouse gas emissions profile is dominated by deforestation and land‐use change. Despite this characteristic, the country has been committed to the development of carbon capture and geological storage (CCS) research since this technology started to be recognized as a relevant solution for greenhouse gas emission reductions. This development has gained attention recently owing to the beginning of the production of pre‐salt reservoirs, which may contain significant amounts of CO2 in the produced fluids. The work has been carried out mostly through the efforts of the academia and industrial enterprises. This paper presents a summary and a brief description of the recent activities being carried out by these sectors, aiming to develop and promote CCS in Brazil.

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“…The reservoir temperature adopted was 92.8 o C, a temperature compatible with PVT data, adopted due to thermodynamic consistence. A reservoir pressure representative of Brazilian pre-salt was adopted, 56.9 MPa (580 Kgf/cm 2 ), the same of Lula field (former Tupi) (Formigli Filho et al, 2009) in order to diagnose fluid uncertainties in this pressure range. The relative permeability curves adopted were modified from the model original curves in order to reproduce oil under CO 2 injection.…”

Section: Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Brazilian pre-salt oil reservoirs have concentrations of CO 2 , and with possible use of CO 2 miscible injection (pure or mixed with natural gas) (Formigli Filho et al, 2009). The economic success of any CO 2 injection requires accuracy at the numerical and quantitative evaluation of the miscibility process, EOS prediction and reservoir simulation in order to provide reliable forecast of the CO 2 EOR recovery.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of Lumping and Equation of State Tuning Methods on the Sub-Salt Reservoirs Simulation

Mello

Ligero

Schiozer

2011

SPE EUROPEC/EAGE Annual Conference and Exhibition

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The Brazilian pre-salt oil reservoirs contain a considerable amount of methane, CO 2 and volatile fractions under high pressure. Several authors suggest that the compositional reservoir simulation is fundamental for the description of their properties and prediction of oil production. Although this technique improves the quality of reservoir management, due to computational limitation, simplifications of fluid data are often recommended, affecting the quality of the compositional simulation. Petroleum reservoir behavior cannot be simulated in the most accurate way using present day computational resources. Simplifications such as lumping and tuning of equation of state (EOS) to describe mixtures have influence on the phase behavior. Fluid characterization becomes an important source of uncertainties in reservoir simulation because PVT data tuning is an inverse problem with multiple possible answers. The objective of this study was to show the impact of the description of the oil behavior under typical Brazilian sub-salt conditions considering oil production and computational effort. This was done through the study of EOS and comparison of the complete fluid with the lumped fluid descriptions. Since simplifications are adopted and PVT data-handling errors are introduced, it was necessary to detect and minimize them. The analysis of this study used comparisons of phase envelopes, MMP and reservoir simulations in a synthetic model. The studied model was based on the second model of SPE 10 th comparative study, heterogeneous, using oil similar to that found in the Brazilian pre-salt, with 42 o API, 3.55% molar CO 2 , and GOR 132.9 ft 3 std/ft 3 . This work emphasizes the importance not only of experimental data quality but also shows the impact of the choice of regression and lumping methods. It also shows the importance of fluid modeling to obtain reliability in the reservoir simulation process. IntroductionThe Brazilian pre-salt oil reservoirs have concentrations of CO 2 , and with possible use of CO 2 miscible injection (pure or mixed with natural gas) (Formigli Filho et al., 2009). The economic success of any CO 2 injection requires accuracy at the numerical and quantitative evaluation of the miscibility process, EOS prediction and reservoir simulation in order to provide reliable forecast of the CO 2 EOR recovery.The compositional simulation models are more accurate to reproduce the fluid flow behavior in petroleum reservoir when significant amount of CO 2 is involved (Jarrell et al., 2002).The compositional simulation is important in the Brazilian pre-salt, since: (1) studies of reinjection of large amount of CO 2 /CH 4 and studies of miscible oil recovery are paramount; (2) volatile oils are dealt with -several researchers (Lohrenz et al., 1963;Reudelhuber and Hindis, 1957) have showed that the surface liquid recovery of volatile oil reservoirs subject to miscible depletion is twice to four times under predicted by black-oil simulation when compared to compositional simulation; (3) light hydrocarbon fractions ...

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Santos Basin’s Pre-Salt Reservoirs Development—The Way Ahead

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Challenges in Implementing an EOR Project in the Pre-Salt Province in Deep Offshore Brasil

Challenges in Implementing an EOR Project in the Pre-Salt Province in Deep Offshore Brasil

Carbon capture and geological storage in Brazil: an overview

Influence of Lumping and Equation of State Tuning Methods on the Sub-Salt Reservoirs Simulation

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