Challenges, Opportunities and Threats of Deep Bottoms-Up Water Injection in Heavy Oil Reservoir: Lessons Learnt from the G Field, South Oman

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaitanya Behera ◽  
Sandip Mahajan ◽  
Carlos Annia ◽  
Mahmood Harthi ◽  
Jane-Frances Obilaja ◽  
...  

Abstract This paper presents the results of a comprehensive study carried out to improve the understanding of deep bottom-up water injection, which enabled optimizing the recovery of a heavy oil field in South Oman. Understanding the variable water injection response and the scale of impact on oil recovery due to reservoir heterogeneity, operating reservoir pressure and liquid offtake management are the main challenges of deep bottoms-up water injection in heavy oil fields. The offtake and throughput management philosophy for heavy oil waterflood is not same as classical light oil. Due to unclear understanding of water injection response, sometimes the operators are tempted to implement alternative water injection trials leading to increase in the risk of losing reserves and unwarranted CAPEX sink. There are several examples of waterflood in heavy oil fields; however, very few examples of deep bottom water injection cases are available globally. The field G is one of the large heavy oil fields in South Oman; the oil viscosity varies between 250cp to 1500cp. The field came on-stream in 1989, but bottoms-up water-injection started in 2015, mainly to supplement the aquifer influx after 40% decline of reservoir pressure. After three years of water injection, the field liquid production was substantially lower than predicted, which implied risk on the incremental reserves. Alternative water injection concepts were tested by implementing multiple water injection trials apprehending the effectiveness of the bottoms-up water injection concept. A comprehensive integrated study including update of geocellular model, full field dynamic simulation, produced water re-injection (PWRI) model and conventional field performance analysis was undertaken for optimizing the field recovery. The Root Cause Analysis (RCA) revealed many reasons for suboptimal field performance including water injection management, productivity impairment due to near wellbore damage, well completion issues, and more importantly the variable water injection response in the field. The dynamic simulation study indicated negligible oil bank development due to frontal displacement and no water cut reversal as initial response to the water injection. Nevertheless, the significance of operating reservoir pressure, liquid offtake and throughput management impact on oil recovery cann't be precluded. The work concludes that the well reservoir management (WRM) strategy for heavy oil field is not same as the classical light oil waterflood. Nevertheless, the reservoir heterogeneity, oil column thickness and saturation history are also important influencing factors for variable water injection response in heavy oil field.

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Ayat Ahmed Jassim ◽  
Abdul Aali Al-dabaj ◽  
Aqeel S. AL-Adili

The water injection of the most important technologies to increase oil production from petroleum reservoirs. In this research, we developed a model for oil tank using the software RUBIS for reservoir simulation. This model was used to make comparison in the production of oil and the reservoir pressure for two case studies where the water was not injected in the first case study but adding new vertical wells while, later, it was injected in the second case study. It represents the results of this work that if the water is not injected, the reservoir model that has been upgraded can produce only 2.9% of the original oil in the tank. This case study also represents a drop in reservoir pressure, which was not enough to support oil production. Thus, the implementation of water injection in the second case study of the average reservoir pressure may support, which led to an increase in oil production by up to 5.5% of the original oil in the tank. so that, the use of water injection is a useful way to increase oil production. Therefore, many of the issues related to this subject valuable of study where the development of new ideas and techniques.


2012 ◽  
Vol 524-527 ◽  
pp. 1577-1580
Author(s):  
Zhi Qiang Huang ◽  
Cheng Song Qiu ◽  
Qin Li ◽  
Ya Chao Ma ◽  
Li Yan Liu

During the process of super heavy oil exploitation in Tahe oil field, when mixing light oil, due to heavy oil and light oil entering into pump from separator directly, the existing ESP string leads to poor mixing and heavy oil coming into the pump, as a result, the pump detection period is greatly shorten; when water injection-production, the injected water can contact with electrical cable and motor directly, causing serious damage to the cable and motor, and the pump detection period is also greatly shorten. This paper designs a new type of ESP string, adding a ESP dome, a sieve tube, a mixing device, an intelligent switch and a direct flushing valve, which can improve the mixing effect of heavy oil and light oil, avoid the injected water directly contacting with electrical cable and motor, in order to protect the electrical cable and motor, improve their service life, extend the pump detection period and reduce production costs. Field test showed that the pump detection period has been prolonged after using the new ESP string, it is recommended to promote the use.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 1339-1352
Author(s):  
Mahamat Tahir Abdramane Mahamat Zene ◽  
Nurul Hasan ◽  
Ruizhong Jiang ◽  
Guan Zhenliang ◽  
Nurafiqah Abdullah

AbstractThe research of the current study is primarily focused on evaluating the reservoir performance by utilizing waterflood technique, based on a case study at Lanea oil field located in Chad; various mechanisms along with approaches were used in considering the best suitable pattern for waterflooding. All the simulation work was compared against a base case, where there was no involvement of water injection. Moreover, for the base case, a significant amount of oil left behind and cannot be swept, because of lower reservoir pressure at the downhill. The recovery factor obtained was in the range of 14.5–15% since 2010, and in order to enhance the oil production, an injection well was applied to boost the reservoir pressure; oil recovery is improved. In addition, sensitivity analysis study was performed to reach the optimum production behavior achieved by possible EOR method. Parameters, such as grid test, injection position, proper selection production location, permeability, and voidage substitution, were defined in the simulation study.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed Ahmed Al-Janabi ◽  
Omar F. Al-Fatlawi ◽  
Dhifaf J. Sadiq ◽  
Haider Abdulmuhsin Mahmood ◽  
Mustafa Alaulddin Al-Juboori

Abstract Artificial lift techniques are a highly effective solution to aid the deterioration of the production especially for mature oil fields, gas lift is one of the oldest and most applied artificial lift methods especially for large oil fields, the gas that is required for injection is quite scarce and expensive resource, optimally allocating the injection rate in each well is a high importance task and not easily applicable. Conventional methods faced some major problems in solving this problem in a network with large number of wells, multi-constrains, multi-objectives, and limited amount of gas. This paper focuses on utilizing the Genetic Algorithm (GA) as a gas lift optimization algorithm to tackle the challenging task of optimally allocating the gas lift injection rate through numerical modeling and simulation studies to maximize the oil production of a Middle Eastern oil field with 20 production wells with limited amount of gas to be injected. The key objective of this study is to assess the performance of the wells of the field after applying gas lift as an artificial lift method and applying the genetic algorithm as an optimization algorithm while comparing the results of the network to the case of artificially lifted wells by utilizing ESP pumps to the network and to have a more accurate view on the practicability of applying the gas lift optimization technique. The comparison is based on different measures and sensitivity studies, reservoir pressure, and water cut sensitivity analysis are applied to allow the assessment of the performance of the wells in the network throughout the life of the field. To have a full and insight view an economic study and comparison was applied in this study to estimate the benefits of applying the gas lift method and the GA optimization technique while comparing the results to the case of the ESP pumps and the case of naturally flowing wells. The gas lift technique proved to have the ability to enhance the production of the oil field and the optimization process showed quite an enhancement in the task of maximizing the oil production rate while using the same amount of gas to be injected in the each well, the sensitivity analysis showed that the gas lift method is comparable to the other artificial lift method and it have an upper hand in handling the reservoir pressure reduction, and economically CAPEX of the gas lift were calculated to be able to assess the time to reach a profitable income by comparing the results of OPEX of gas lift the technique showed a profitable income higher than the cases of naturally flowing wells and the ESP pumps lifted wells. Additionally, the paper illustrated the genetic algorithm (GA) optimization model in a way that allowed it to be followed as a guide for the task of optimizing the gas injection rate for a network with a large number of wells and limited amount of gas to be injected.


2021 ◽  
pp. 86-98
Author(s):  
V. Yu. Ogoreltsev ◽  
S. A. Leontiev ◽  
A. S. Drozdov

When developing hard-to-recover reserves of oil fields, methods of enhanced oil recovery, used from chemical ones, are massively used. To establish the actual oil-washing characteristics of surfactant grades accepted for testing in the pore space of oil-containing reservoir rocks, a set of laboratory studies was carried out, including the study of molecular-surface properties upon contact of oil from the BS10 formation of the West Surgutskoye field and model water types with the addition of surfactants of various concentrations, as well as filtration tests of surfactant technology compositions on core models of the VK1 reservoir of the Rogozhnikovskoye oil field. On the basis of the performed laboratory studies of rocks, it has been established that conducting pilot operations with the use of Neonol RHP-20 will lead to higher technological efficiency than from the currently used at the company's fields in the compositions of the technologies of physical and chemical EOR Neonol BS-1 and proposed for application of Neftenol VKS, Aldinol-50 and Betanol.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Reham Al-Jabri ◽  
Rouhollah Farajzadeh ◽  
Abdullah Alkindi ◽  
Rifaat Al-Mjeni ◽  
David Rousseau ◽  
...  

Abstract Heavy oil reservoirs remain challenging for surfactant-based EOR. In particular, selecting fine-tuned and cost effective chemical formulations requires extensive laboratory work and a solid methodology. This paper reports a laboratory feasibility study, aiming at designing a surfactant-polymer pilot for a heavy oil field with an oil viscosity of ~500cP in the South of Sultanate of Oman, where polymer flooding has already been successfully trialed. A major driver was to design a simple chemical EOR method, to minimize the risk of operational issues (e.g. scaling) and ensure smooth logistics on the field. To that end, a dedicated alkaline-free and solvent-free surfactant polymer (SP) formulation has been designed, with its sole three components, polymer, surfactant and co-surfactant, being readily available industrial chemicals. This part of the work has been reported in a previous paper. A comprehensive set of oil recovery coreflood tests has then been carried out with two objectives: validate the intrinsic performances of the SP formulation in terms of residual oil mobilization and establish an optimal injection strategy to maximize oil recovery with minimal surfactant dosage. The 10 coreflood tests performed involved: Bentheimer sandstone, for baseline assessments on large plugs with minimized experimental uncertainties; homogeneous artificial sand and clays granular packs built to have representative mineralogical composition, for tuning of the injection parameters; native reservoir rock plugs, unstacked in order to avoid any bias, to validate the injection strategy in fully representative conditions. All surfactant injections were performed after long polymer injections, to mimic the operational conditions in the field. Under injection of "infinite" slugs of the SP formulation, all tests have led to tertiary recoveries of more than 88% of the remaining oil after waterflood with final oil saturations of less than 5%. When short slugs of SP formulation were injected, tertiary recoveries were larger than 70% ROIP with final oil saturations less than 10%. The final optimized test on a reservoir rock plug, which was selected after an extensive review of the petrophysical and mineralogical properties of the available reservoir cores, led to a tertiary recovery of 90% ROIP with a final oil saturation of 2%, after injection of 0.35 PV of SP formulation at 6 g/L total surfactant concentration, with surfactant losses of 0.14 mg-surfactant/g(rock). Further optimization will allow accelerating oil bank arrival and reducing the large PV of chase polymer needed to mobilize the liberated oil. An additional part of the work consisted in generating the parameters needed for reservoir scale simulation. This required dedicated laboratory assays and history matching simulations of which the results are presented and discussed. These outcomes validate, at lab scale, the feasibility of a surfactant polymer process for the heavy oil field investigated. As there has been no published field test of SP injection in heavy oil, this work may also open the way to a new range of field applications.


2012 ◽  
Vol 268-270 ◽  
pp. 547-550
Author(s):  
Qing Wang Liu ◽  
Xin Wang ◽  
Zhen Zhong Fan ◽  
Jiao Wang ◽  
Rui Gao ◽  
...  

Liaohe oil field block 58 for Huancai, the efficiency of production of thickened oil is low, and the efficiency of displacement is worse, likely to cause other issues. Researching and developing an type of Heavy Oil Viscosity Reducer for exploiting. The high viscosity of W/O emulsion changed into low viscosity O/W emulsion to facilitate recovery, enhanced oil recovery. Through the experiment determine the viscosity properties of Heavy Oil Viscosity Reducer. The oil/water interfacial tension is lower than 0.0031mN•m-1, salt-resisting is good. The efficiency of viscosity reduction is higher than 90%, and also good at 180°C.


1994 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
G. B. Salter ◽  
W. P. Kerckhoff

Development of the Cossack and Wanaea oil fields is in progress with first oil scheduled for late 1995. Wanaea oil reserves are estimated in the order of 32 x 106m3 (200 MMstb) making this the largest oil field development currently underway in Australia.Development planning for these fields posed a unique set of challenges.Key subsurface uncertainties are the requirement for water injection (Wanaea only) and well numbers. Strategies for managing these uncertainties were studied and appropriate flexibility built-in to planned facilities.Alternative facility concepts including steel/concrete platforms and floating options were studied-the concept selected comprises subsea wells tied-back to production/storage/export facilities on an FPSO located over Wanaea.In view of the high proportion of costs associated with the subsea components, significant effort was focussed on flowline optimisation, simplification and cost reduction. These actions have led to potential major economic benefits.Gas utilisation options included reinjection into the oil reservoirs, export for re-injection into North Rankin or export to shore. The latter requires the installation of an LPG plant onshore and was selected as the simplest, safest and the most economically attractive method.


2018 ◽  
Vol 785 ◽  
pp. 159-170
Author(s):  
Vadim Aleksandrov ◽  
Kirill Galinskij ◽  
Andrey Ponomarev ◽  
Vadim Golozubenko ◽  
Yuriy Sivkov

One of the most important aspects in the activities of oil companies in the Western Siberia is to improve the effectiveness of water-flooding as the main method of impact on the formation. This is due to the fact that at the present time reservoirs of a complex structure with difficult to recover reserves prevail among newly introduced development objects, the extraction of which is extremely difficult using a simple method of water injection volumes regulation. First of all, this refers to reservoirs of Jurassic deposits, which are characterized by the most complex geological structure and porosity and permeability properties. A promising direction in improving the water-flooding system at such objects is the use of physical and chemical technologies to enhance the oil recovery of formations, and primarily, referring to the diverter technology. The research objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of using “hard” type diverter compositions to enhance oil recovery of formations. With the help of detailed oil-field analysis and field-geophysical studies, the nature of the development of oil reserves for Jurassic development sites has been assessed.


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