The ability to accurately simulate and optimize fully integrated oil and gas fields is of critical importance in the development and operation of an asset. To this end, a novel and comprehensive framework for simulating fields comprised of connected reservoirs, wells, and production facilities is presented. Individual field components may be connected to each other through physical equipment such as pipes, and operations may be subject to field-wide constraints, such as limits on total production of green house gases. The proposed framework allows for simulation of the evolution of such a field, optimization of the field under various constraint choices, and planning and scheduling of the entire field operations. The framework is founded on representing each component using appropriate sets of Models, Equations and Variables (MEV) combined with a common Physical Property Manager that ensures a consistent calculation methodology, and uses grid-level partitioning to support parallelism. The MEV system operates in concert with customized nonlinear and linear equation solvers to generate updated values for variables in all the different sub-systems, regardless of their originating component. Optimizers in the system manipulate the same variables employed in the MEV solution process to assemble objective functions, act on decision variables, and satisfy constraints. These variables may also be parameterized to support uncertainty analysis or design possibilities. The componentized nature of the equation set allows the ability to plug in alternate custom technologies to replace or augment capabilities. The framework supports multiple fidelities for modelling the components, and enables the use of different coupling styles between them. Choices range from using simple proxy models for certain components, to explicit one- and two-way coupling of more rigorous models, up to solving a fully coupled, detailed field representation. It will be demonstrated that this approach allows for efficient simulation of the combined systems under different constraints.
Carmon Creek is Shell's Heavy Oil In-Situ thermal field development project in Peace River, Alberta, Canada. The Peace River Lease contains some 10 billion barrels of bitumen in-place at a depth of 600 m with viscosity as high as 100,000 cP. The Carmon Creek Phase 1&2 facilities, targeting a subset of this resource, are planned to start-up in 2018 and include oil treatment at 80,000 bod, produced water recycling and steam generation at 50 kt/d and electricity from co-generation at 600 MW. Over the project life-cycle, approximately 7000 dedicated wells (injectors and producers) will be drilled. The Carmon Creek development concept is a combination of cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) and vertical steam drive (VSD) utilizing vertical and deviated wells in inverted 7-spot patterns at a well spacing of 115m (or 2.8 acres). Produced and imported gas is burnt to generate steam and electricity in co-generation facilities. Electricity is exported to market. After transfer of the thermal energy in the steam the bitumen viscosity is reduced sufficiently enabling production via conventional beam pumps. The produced emulsion is separated into gas, oil and water for treatment in the central processing facilities. Acid gas consisting CO2 and H2S is re-injected to deep disposal and the remaining treated produced gas burned in the co-generation facilities. Treated bitumen is mixed with diluents for pipeline export. Steam generation is fed by recycled water with excess water stored in a saline aquifer, which can be back-produced as needed. This paper provides an overview of the main aspects of the field development, the challenges related to project delivery for a mega-thermal development and the solutions that were selected to address these challenges.
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