Numerical and Laboratory Assessment of the Oil-Recovery Mechanisms in High-Pressure Air Injection (HPAI) Process

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Niz-Velásquez
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Air Injection ◽  
Laboratory Assessment ◽  
Recovery Mechanisms

Recovery Factors in High-Pressure Air Injection Projects Revisited

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (06) ◽  
pp. 1097-1106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dubert Gutierrez ◽  
Archie R. Taylor ◽  
Vinodh Kumar ◽  
Matthew G. Ursenbach ◽  
Robert G. Moore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Combustion Front ◽  
Combustion Zone ◽  
Oil Prices ◽  
Suggested Method ◽  
Air Injection ◽  
Driving Mechanism ◽  
Light Oil ◽  
Early Production

Summary High-pressure air injection (HPAI) is an improved-oil-recovery (IOR) process in which compressed air is injected into a deep light-oil reservoir with the expectation that the oxygen in the injected air will react with a fraction of the reservoir oil at an elevated temperature to produce carbon dioxide. The resulting flue-gas mixture provides the main mobilizing force to the oil downstream of the reaction region, sweeping it to production wells. The combustion zone itself may provide a critical part of the sweep mechanism. In 1994, Fassihi et al. proposed a method for estimating recovery factors of light-oil air-injection projects on the basis of the performance of two successful HPAI projects. Their suggested method relies on the extrapolation of the field gas/oil ratio (GOR) up to an economic limit. In other words, it treats HPAI as an immiscible gasflood and neglects any potential oil that could be recovered by the combustion front. The truth is that, although early production during an HPAI process is caused mostly by repressurization and gasflood effects, once a pore volume of air has been injected, the combustion front becomes the main driving mechanism. Moreover, one of the unique features of air injection is the self-correcting nature of the combustion zone, which promotes good volumetric sweep of the reservoir. This paper presents laboratory and field evidence of the presence of a thermal front during HPAI operations and evidence of its beneficial impact on oil recovery. An analysis of the three HPAI projects in Buffalo field, which are the oldest HPAI projects currently in operation, shows that only a small fraction of the reservoir has been burned and, if time allows and the projects are managed appropriately, burning of more reservoir volumes could result in much higher oil recoveries than those predicted by the gasflood approach. Introduction HPAI is an emerging technology for the recovery of light oils that has proved to be a valuable IOR process, especially in deep thin low-permeability reservoirs (Erickson et al. 1994; Kumar and Fassihi 1995; Kumar et al. 2007a, 2007b; Fassihi et al. 1996, 1997). The first extended field test of HPAI began in 1963 on the Sloss field in Nebraska (Parrish et al. 1974a, 1974b), where Amoco's Combination of Forward Combustion and Waterflooding (COFCAW) process was applied as a tertiary-recovery process to a deep (6,200 ft), thin (11 ft), light-oil (38.8°API), watered-out reservoir. This COFCAW pilot recovered 83,992 bbl of oil, which is equivalent to 43% of the oil remaining in the five-spot pattern after waterflood. In 1967, the pilot was expanded from an 80- to a 960-acre project and recovered 527,000 bbl of incremental oil. However, it proved to be uneconomical, with crude-oil prices at less than USD 3/bbl. The second application of HPAI was the West Heidelberg pressure-maintenance project (Huffman et al. 1983) in the US state of Mississippi, which started in 1971 as a secondary-recovery project in the deep (11,400 ft) Cotton Valley sands. Even though oil prices were less than USD 4/bbl during the early period of the air-injection operations, payout of the project occurred at approximately 2.5 years, and the project continued to be a successful air-injection project. One interesting aspect of this project was the simulation work presented by Kumar (1991), which showed that, although the early production was mainly because of pressure maintenance, more than half of the cumulative oil production was mainly a result of thermal effects. An important milestone in the advance of HPAI was the implementation of commercial secondary HPAI projects in the North and South Dakota portions of the Williston basin, which started in 1979 and continues to be a technical and economic success (Erickson et al. 1994; Kumar and Fassihi 1995; Kumar et al. 2007a, 2007b; Fassihi et al. 1996, 1997). The estimation of ultimate recovery in HPAI projects is subject to a high level of uncertainty and requires history matching. Nevertheless, in 1994, Kumar and Fassihi (1995) proposed a method for estimating recovery factors of light-oil air-injection projects on the basis of the performance of two HPAI projects. Their suggested method relies on the extrapolation of the field GOR up to an economic limit. In other words, it considers HPAI as an immiscible gasflood. This paper intends to challenge that "gasflood" approach with a "combustion" approach, on the basis of laboratory results and field data gathered mostly from the Buffalo field, which comprises the three oldest HPAI projects currently in operation.

Effect of low-temperature oxidation of light oil on oil recovery during high pressure air injection

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (13) ◽  
pp. 937-943 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wan-Fen Pu ◽  
Shuai Zhao ◽  
Jing-Jun Pan ◽  
Zhi-Zhong Lin ◽  
Ru-Yan Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Low Temperature ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Air Injection ◽  
Low Temperature Oxidation ◽  
Temperature Oxidation ◽  
Light Oil

A Guide to High Pressure Air Injection (HPAI) Based Oil Recovery

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.G. Moore ◽  
S.A. Mehta ◽  
M.G. Ursenbach
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Air Injection

scholarly journals Evaluation of the subject geological area suitability for oil recovery by High-Pressure Air Injection method

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Aysylu Askarova ◽  
Alexander Cheremisin ◽  
John Belgrave ◽  
Aleksei Solovyev ◽  
Raj Mehta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Numerical Modeling ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Thermodynamic Characteristics ◽  
Air Injection ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Concentration Limit ◽  
Field Scale ◽  
Technological Parameters ◽  
Oil Viscosity

Abstract. The considerable decline of conventional oil and gas reserves and respectively their production introduces new challenges to the energy industry. It resulted in the involvement of hard-to-recover reserves using advanced enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques. Thermal methods of EOR are recognized as most technically and commercially developed methods for the highly viscous crude oil. High-Pressure Air Injection (HPAI) is one of the thermal production methods that reduce oil viscosity and increases recovery. HPAI has already been effectively applied for different types of reservoirs development and proven to be economically feasible. The application performance of the HPAI technology strongly depends on the quality of experimental and numerical modeling conducted on the target object basis. Before the field tests, physicochemical and thermodynamic characteristics of the process were studied. Further consequent numerical modeling of laboratory-scale oxidation experiments and field-scale simulation was conducted to estimate HPAI method feasibility based on the results of oxidation studies. A medium pressure combustion tube (MPCT) oxidation experiment was carried out to provide stoichiometry of the reactions and field design parameters. A 3D numerical model of the MPCT experiment was constructed taking into account the multilayer design, thermal properties, heating regimes, and reaction model. The “history” matched parameters such as fluid production masses and volumes, temperature profiles along the tubes at different times and produced gas composition demonstrated good correspondence with experimental results. The results obtained during the experiment and modeling of MPCT (fluid properties, relative phase permeability, kinetic model, technological parameters) were used in field-scale modeling using various thermal EOR scenarios. Air breakthrough into production wells was observed, thus a 2 % oxygen concentration limit where implied. The overall performance of four different scenarios was compared within 30 years timeframe. The development system was also examined to achieve the maximum economic indicators with the identifications of risks and main uncertainties.

High-Pressure Air Injection for Improved Oil Recovery: Low-Temperature Oxidation Models and Thermal Effect

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 780-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenya Chen ◽  
Lei Wang ◽  
Qiong Duan ◽  
Liang Zhang ◽  
Shaoran Ren
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Low Temperature ◽  
Thermal Effect ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Air Injection ◽  
Low Temperature Oxidation ◽  
Improved Oil Recovery ◽  
Temperature Oxidation

Evaluation of the subject geological area suitability for oil recovery by High-Pressure Air Injection method

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Askarova Aysylu ◽  
Cheremisin Alexander ◽  
Solovyev Aleksei ◽  
Cheremisin Alexey
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Numerical Modeling ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Thermodynamic Characteristics ◽  
Air Injection ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Concentration Limit ◽  
Field Scale ◽  
Technological Parameters ◽  
Oil Viscosity

<p>The considerable decline of conventional oil and gas reserves and respectively their production introduces new challenges to the energy industry. It resulted in the involvement of hard-to-recover reserves using advanced enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques. Thermal methods of EOR are recognized as most technically and commercially developed methods for the highly viscous crude. High-Pressure Air Injection (HPAI) is one of the thermal production methods that reduce oil viscosity and increases the recovery (Yoshioka et al, Moore et al., 2002). HPAI has been already effectively applied for different types of reservoirs development and proven to be economically feasible. </p><p>The application performance of the HPAI technology strongly depends on the quality of experimental and numerical modeling conducted on the the target object basis. Prior to the field tests physicochemical and thermodynamic characteristics of the process were studied. Further consequent numerical modeling of laboratory-scale oxidation experiments and field-scale simulation were conducted to estimate HPAI method feasibility based on the results of oxidation studies. A medium pressure combustion tube (MPCT) oxidation experiment was carried out to provide stoichiometry of the reactions and field design parameters. A 3D numerical model of the MPCT experiment was constructed taking into account the multilayer design, thermal properties, heating regimes and reaction model (Sequera et al., 2010; Chen et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2016). The “history” matched parameters such as fluid production masses and volumes, temperature profiles along the tubes at different times and produced gas composition demonstrated good correspondence with experimental results. The results obtained during the experiment and modeling of MPCT (fluid properties, relative phase permeability, kinetic model, technological parameters) were used in field-scale modeling using various thermal EOR scenarios. Air breakthrough into production wells was observed, thus a 2 percent oxygen concentration limit where implied. The overall performance of four different scenarios was compared within 15 years timeframe. The development system was also examined to achieve the maximum economic indicators with the identifications of risks and main uncertainties.</p><p> </p>

Evaluation of the Miscibility and Contribution of Flue Gas to Oil Recovery Under High Pressure Air Injection

2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
O.S. Shokoya ◽  
S.A. Mehta ◽  
R.G. Moore ◽  
B.B. Maini ◽  
M. Pooladi-Darvish ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Flue Gas ◽  
Air Injection
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