Gas-Injection Rate Needed for SAG Foam Processes To Overcome Gravity Override

SPE Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (01) ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.S.. S. Boeije ◽  
W.R.. R. Rossen

Summary Gravity override is a severe problem in gas-injection enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) processes, especially in relatively homogeneous formations. Foam can reduce gravity override. Shan and Rossen (2004) show that the best foam process for overcoming gravity override is one of injecting a large slug of surfactant followed by a large slug of gas, injected at constant, maximum-allowable injection pressure. This process works because foam collapses near the injection well, giving good injectivity simultaneously with mobility control at the leading edge of the gas bank. The supply of gas that would be needed to maintain constant injection pressure is a concern for EOR processes in which gas is produced industrially or from a separations plant with limited capacity: The available gas stream may not be sufficient for the optimal process. We show that for such a process, the pressure drop across the foam bank back to the injection well, at fixed injection rate, is nearly constant as the foam bank propagates radially outward. From this result, one can derive a simple formula to predict the rate of gas injection required for each of two limiting cases: An extremely strong foam at the foam front, many times more viscous than the fluids it displaces. In this case, the rate of gas injection required to maintain constant injection pressure is nearly constant, but injection rate is low. A foam just strong enough to maintain mobility control at its leading edge. In this case, injection rate required to maintain constant injection pressure increases steeply with time. Use of the formulae provides a quick initial estimate of how gas-injection rate must vary over the duration of the EOR process to maintain an optimal process. The fit to simulations of surfactant-alternating-gas (SAG) foam-injection rate in a five-spot pattern is remarkably good, especially for strong foam, given the simplicity of the model. In addition, we illustrate how one would determine the properties of a foam that would fit the available gas stream. This criterion then could guide the development of a surfactant formulation with these properties.

Geofluids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Xiang Li ◽  
Yuan Cheng ◽  
Wulong Tao ◽  
Shalake Sarulicaoketi ◽  
Xuhui Ji ◽  
...  

The production of a low permeability reservoir decreases rapidly by depletion development, and it needs to supplement formation energy to obtain stable production. Common energy supplement methods include water injection and gas injection. Nitrogen injection is an economic and effective development method for specific reservoir types. In order to study the feasibility and reasonable injection parameters of nitrogen injection development of fractured reservoir, this paper uses long cores to carry out displacement experiment. Firstly, the effects of water injection and nitrogen injection development of a fractured reservoir are compared through experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of nitrogen injection development of the fractured reservoir. Secondly, the effects of gas-water alternate displacement after water drive and gas-water alternate displacement after gas drive are compared through experiments to study the situation of water injection or gas injection development. Finally, the reasonable parameters of nitrogen gas-water alternate injection are optimized by orthogonal experimental design. Results show that nitrogen injection can effectively enhance oil production of the reservoir with natural fractures in early periods, but gas channeling easily occurs in continuous nitrogen flooding. After water flooding, gas-water alternate flooding can effectively reduce the injection pressure and improve the reservoir recovery, but the time of gas-water alternate injection cannot be too late. It is revealed that the factors influencing the nitrogen-water alternative effect are sorted from large to small as follows: cycle injected volume, nitrogen and water slug ratio, and injection rate. The optimal cycle injected volume is around 1 PV, the nitrogen and water slug ratio is between 1 and 2, and the injection rate is between 0.1 and 0.2 mL/min.


2012 ◽  
Vol 155-156 ◽  
pp. 1000-1004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua Tong ◽  
Xiao Hua Zhu ◽  
Shao Hu Liu ◽  
Chang Shuai Shi

Casing damage is a very severe problem in steam-injection well due to thermal stress. In this paper, the computational model of casing-cement-formation coupling system is established. Considering strength degradation of casing, the temperature field and stress field are coupled to calculate casing stress. Related factors, such as concentric casing, cement thickness, casing specification and internal pressure, are considered to analyze casing safety. The results show that yield strength of N80 casing reduces as a linear function with temperature variation. There is little effect of cement thickness and casing specification on the thermal stress. Von Mises stress decreases with increase of steam injection pressure in wellbore as the casing doesn't yield. Based on the results, some measures against casing damage are presented.


2020 ◽  
pp. 2004-2016
Author(s):  
Dahlia Abdulhadi Al-Obaidi ◽  
Mohammed Saleh Al-Jawad

The Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage (GAGD) process has become one of the most important processes to enhance oil recovery in both secondary and tertiary recovery stages and through immiscible and miscible modes.  Its advantages came from the ability to provide gravity-stable oil displacement for improving oil recovery, when compared with conventional gas injection methods such as Continuous Gas Injection (CGI) and Water – Alternative Gas (WAG). Vertical injectors for CO2   gas were placed at the top of the reservoir to form a gas cap which drives the oil towards the horizontal oil producing wells which are located above the oil-water-contact. The GAGD process was developed and tested in vertical wells to increase oil recovery in reservoirs with bottom water drive and strong water coning tendencies. Many physical and simulation models of GAGD performance were studied at ambient and reservoir conditions to investigate the effects of this method to enhance the recovery of oil and to examine the most effective parameters that control the GAGD process.      A prototype 2D simulation model based on the scaled physical model was built for CO2-assisted gravity drainage in different statement scenarios. The effects of gas injection rate, gas injection pressure and oil production rate on the performance of immiscible CO2-assisted gravity drainage-enhanced oil recovery were investigated. The results revealed that the ultimate oil recovery increases considerably with increasing oil production rates. Increasing gas injection rate improves the performance of the process while high pressure gas injection leads to less effective gravity mediated recovery.


Geofluids ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Hongwu Lei ◽  
Qian Zhang ◽  
Xiaochun Li

Depleted gas reservoirs are important potential sites for CO2 geological sequestration due to their proven integrity and safety, well-known geological characteristics, and existing infrastructures and wells built for natural gas production. The Sichuan Basin has a large number of gas fields in which approximately 5.89×109 tons of CO2 can be stored. The Huangcaoxia gas field has the best opportunity in the eastern Sichuan Basin for a pilot project of CO2 sequestration due to its relatively large storage capacity and the nearly depleted state. A coupled thermal-hydrodynamic model including faults is built based on the geological and hydrogeological conditions in the Huangcaoxia gas field. The results of the numerical simulations show that the downhole temperature is above 80°C at a downhole pressure of 14 MPa under the constraint of temperature drop in the reservoir due to the strong Joule-Thomson effect. The corresponding injection pressure and temperature at the wellhead are 10.5 MPa and 60°C, respectively. The sizes of the pressure and CO2 plumes after an injection of 10 years are 18 km and 5 km, respectively. The zone affected by temperature change is very small, being about 1-2 km away from the injection well. The injection rate in the injection well Cao 31 averages 6.89 kg/s (21.73×104 tons/a). For a commercial-scale injection, another four wells (Cao 9, Cao 30, Cao 6, and Cao 22) can be combined with the Cao 31 well for injection, approaching an injection rate of 35 kg/s (1.10×106 tons/a). Both the pressure and temperature of CO2 injection decrease with the increasing depleted pressure in the gas reservoir when the latter is below 6 MPa. With the technique of CO2-enhanced gas recovery (CO2-EGR), the CO2 injection rate is improved and approximately 1.58×107 kg of gas can be produced during a studied time period of 10 years.


2017 ◽  
pp. 63-67
Author(s):  
L. A. Vaganov ◽  
A. Yu. Sencov ◽  
A. A. Ankudinov ◽  
N. S. Polyakova

The article presents a description of the settlement method of necessary injection rates calculation, which is depended on the injected water migration into the surrounding wells and their mutual location. On the basis of the settlement method the targeted program of geological and technical measures for regulating the work of the injection well stock was created and implemented by the example of the BV7 formation of the Uzhno-Vyintoiskoe oil field.


Polymers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Huang ◽  
Xiaohui Li ◽  
Cheng Fu ◽  
Ying Wang ◽  
Haoran Cheng

Previous studies showed the difficulty during polymer flooding and the low producing degree for the low permeability layer. To solve the problem, Daqing, the first oil company, puts forward the polymer-separate-layer-injection-technology which separates mass and pressure in a single pipe. This technology mainly increases the control range of injection pressure of fluid by using the annular de-pressure tool, and reasonably distributes the molecular weight of the polymer injected into the thin and poor layers through the shearing of the different-medium-injection-tools. This occurs, in order to take advantage of the shearing thinning property of polymer solution and avoid the energy loss caused by the turbulent flow of polymer solution due to excessive injection rate in different injection tools. Combining rheological property of polymer and local perturbation theory, a rheological model of polymer solution in different-medium-injection-tools is derived and the maximum injection velocity is determined. The ranges of polymer viscosity in different injection tools are mainly determined by the structures of the different injection tools. However, the value of polymer viscosity is mainly determined by the concentration of polymer solution. So, the relation between the molecular weight of polymer and the permeability of layers should be firstly determined, and then the structural parameter combination of the different-medium-injection-tool should be optimized. The results of the study are important for regulating polymer injection parameters in the oilfield which enhances the oil recovery with reduced the cost.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prosper Kiisi Lekia

Abstract One of the challenges of the petroleum industry is achieving maximum recovery from oil reservoirs. The natural energy of the reservoir, primary recoveries in most cases do not exceed 20%. To improve recovery, secondary recovery techniques are employed. With secondary recovery techniques such as waterflooding, an incremental recovery ranging from 15 to 25% can be achieved. Several theories and methods have been developed for predicting waterflood performance. The Dykstra-Parson technique stands as the most widely used of these methods. The authors developed a discrete, analytical solution from which the vertical coverage, water-oil ratio, cumulative oil produced, cumulative water produced and injected, and the time required for injection was determined. Reznik et al extended the work of Dykstra and Parson to include exact, analytical, continuous solutions, with explicit solutions for time, constant injection pressure, and constant overall injection rate conditions, property time, real or process time, with the assumption of piston-like displacement. This work presents a computer implementation to compare the results of the Dykstra and Parson method, and the Reznik et al extension. A user-friendly graphical user interface executable application has been developed for both methods using Python 3. The application provides an interactive GUI output for graphs and tables with the python matplotlib module, and Pandastable. The GUI was built with Tkinter and converted to an executable desktop application using Pyinstaller and the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, to serve as a hands-on tool for petroleum engineers and the industry. The results of the program for both methods gave a close match with that obtained from the simulation performed with Flow (Open Porous Media). The results provided more insight into the underlying principles and applications of the methods.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaer I. Ismail ◽  
Emad W. Al-Shalabi ◽  
Mahmoud Bedewi ◽  
Waleed AlAmeri

Abstract Gas injection is one of the most commonly used enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. However, there are multiple problems associated with gas injection including gravity override, viscous fingering, and channeling. These problems are due to an adverse mobility ratio and cause early breakthrough of the gas resulting, in poor recovery efficiency. A Water Alternating Gas (WAG) injection process is recommended to resolve these problems through better mobility control of gas, leading to better project economics. However, poor WAG design and lack of understanding of the different factors that control its performance might result in unfavorable oil recovery. Therefore, this study provides more insight into improving WAG oil recovery by optimizing different surface and subsurface WAG parameters using a coupled surface and subsurface simulator. Moreover, the work investigates the effects of hysteresis on WAG performance. This case study investigates a field named Volve, which is a decommissioned sandstone field in the North Sea. Experimental design of factors influencing WAG performance on this base case was studied. Sensitivity analysis was performed on different surface and subsurface WAG parameters including WAG ratio, time to start WAG, total gas slug size, cycle slug size, and tubing diameter. A full two-level factorial design was used for the sensitivity study. The significant parameters of interest were further optimized numerically to maximize oil recovery. The results showed that the total slug size is the most important parameter, followed by time to start WAG, and then cycle slug size. WAG ratio appeared in some of the interaction terms while tubing diameter effect was found to be negligible. The study also showed that phase hysteresis has little to no effect on oil recovery. Based on the optimization, it is recommended to perform waterflooding followed by tertiary WAG injection for maximizing oil recovery from the Volve field. Furthermore, miscible WAG injection resulted in an incremental oil recovery between 5 to 11% OOIP compared to conventional waterflooding. WAG optimization is case-dependent and hence, the findings of this study hold only for the studied case, but the workflow should be applicable to any reservoir. Unlike most previous work, this study investigates WAG optimization considering both surface and subsurface parameters using a coupled model.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sagun Devshali ◽  
Ravi Raman ◽  
Sanjay Kumar Malhotra ◽  
Mahendra Prasad Yadav ◽  
Rishabh Uniyal

Abstract The paper aims to discuss various issues pertaining to gas lift system and instabilities in low producer wells along with the necessary measures for addressing those issues. The effect of various parameters such as tubing size, gas injection rate, multi-porting and gas lift valve port diameter on the performance analysis of integrated gas lift system along with the flow stability have been discussed in the paper. Field X is one of the matured offshore fields in India which has been producing for over 40 years. It is a multi-pay, heterogeneous and complex reservoir. The field is producing through six Process Complexes and more than 90% of the wells are operating on gas lift. As most of the producing wells in the field are operating on gas lift, continuous performance analysis of gas lift to optimize production is imperative to enhance or sustain production. 121 Oil wells and 7 Gas wells are producing through 18 Wellhead platforms to complex X1 of the field X. Out of these 121 oil wells, 5 are producing on self and remaining 116 with gas lift. In this paper, performance analysis of these 116 flowing gas lift wells, carried out to identify various problems which leads to sub-optimal production such as inadequate gas injection, multi-porting, CV choking, faulty GLVs etc. has been discussed. On the basis of simulation studies and analysis of findings, requisite optimization/ intervention measures proposed to improve performance of the wells have been brought out in the paper. The recommended measures predicted the liquid gain of about 1570 barrels per day (518 barrels of oil per day) and an injection gas savings in the region of about 28 million SCFD. Further, the nodal analysis carried out indicates that the aforementioned gas injection saving of 28 million SCFD would facilitate in minimizing the back pressure in the flow line network and is likely to result in an additional production gain of 350 barrels of liquid per day (65 barrels of oil per day) which adds up to a total gain of 1920 barrels of liquid per day (583 barrels of oil per day). Additionally, system/ nodal analysis has also been carried out for optimal gas allocation in the field through Integrated Production Modelling. The analysis brings out a reduction in gas injection by 46 million SCFD with likely incremental oil gain of ~100 barrels of oil per day.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1073-1076 ◽  
pp. 2310-2315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Xian Wang ◽  
Wan Jing Luo ◽  
Jie Ding

Due to the common problems of waterflood in low-permeability reservoirs, the reasearch of finely layered water injection is carried out. This paper established the finely layered water injection standard in low-permeability reservoirs and analysed the sensitivity of engineering parameters as well as evaluated the effect of the finely layered water injection standard in Block A with the semi-quantitative to quantitative method. The results show that: according to the finely layered water injection standard, it can be divided into three types: layered water injection between the layers, layered water injection in inner layer, layered water injection between fracture segment and no-fracture segment. Under the guidance of the standard, it sloved the problem of uneven absorption profile in Block A in some degree and could improve the oil recovery by 3.5%. The sensitivity analysis shows that good performance of finely layered water injection in Block A requires the reservoir permeability ratio should be less than 10, the perforation thickness should not exceed 10 m, the amount of layered injection layers should be less than 3, the surface injection pressure should be below 14 MPa and the injection rate shuold be controlled at about 35 m3/d.


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