Sand control has traditionally been one of the biggest problems affecting production facilities and the design of surface equipment leading to escalation of project costs. With industry venturing into deeper waters and rising crude prices it's essential to develop complete and forget techniques for offshore locations most probable to produce sand. Hence a proper analysis for sand prediction and management has been at the forefront in research by many companies. The most viable alternative today being gravel packs although requiring constant attention as seen through various literature reviews. We emphasized on the chemical consolidation technique for sand control which has been overlooked but is promising considering escalating maintenance costs. We would like to introduce a new resin consolidation system which is cost effective and withstand very high pressures and temperature ranges from 50 oF to 450 oF. The resin consists of Aromatic Polyesteramide and Tri-alkoxy organo silane based consolidation system. The chemicals combine together on contact with formation water to essentially hydrolyze it at the sites to form a strong silanol adhesive which bonds the grains together thus giving a highly strong bond. The highlight of the paper is the process of consolidation which is site specific thus preventing the considerable loss in porosity and permeability as is generally seen in chemical consolidation systems. The paper describes the complete properties of the polymer resin system and the process of consolidation with the new system. In addition it describes the advantages of being environmental friendly and easier to handle with comparison to certain furan based resin systems that are currently used in the industry and have handling issues. Introduction Sand production is defined as production of fines leading to plugging of perforations of the well or sand, fines being produced along with hydrocarbons leading to decrease in production efficiency. Sand problems are usually associated with shallow reservoirs which are unconsolidated due to lack of cementation material and overburden pressure. But literature review has suggested that sand production problems have been encountered in deepwater basins due to various factors which include high production rates. There may be multiple factors leading to sand production but essentially they all lead to reduction in production efficiency and also damage to equipment thus leading to economic losses. Hence it is absolutely essential to design run and forget system that prevents sand production.
The majority of enhanced oil recovery projects currently underway are based on Water floods which are known to provide lesser recovery compared to other recovery mechanisms. Many such reservoirs exist where the recovery has been less than 30% altogether due to various drawbacks of the conventional Water floods. The paper would like to discuss a new EOR technique using Acoustic and Seismic energy to reduce interfacial tension and promote coalescence of oil ganglia using the resonant frequency principle. The technique uses pressure and sound waves at pre-determined frequencies to set the oil molecules in motion to promote coalescence and thus reducing the fingering effects. The flood pattern can be optimized by recovering oil from previously unswept areas. It thus enhances the life of the primary flood providing valuable economic savings. The process can also be applied to various reservoirs in their tertiary recovery phase to extend the life of the project. Experiments conducted in the lab show that the frequency of oil and water may differ from reservoir to reservoir and compositional analysis of samples is required to determine the resonating frequency. The design of the downhole tools for injector wells to implement this technique are also discussed briefly. Introduction The Oil production is on decline with all major producing reservoirs already reaching their peak period, thus emphasizing the need of enhanced oil recovery techniques to produce oil left in the reservoir after waterflood and other pressure maintenance techniques. According U.S. Department of Energy, more than 60 % of the oil is left in the reservoirs which are currently the target for EOR. Various methods have been proposed and many have been implemented in fields around the globe. They include chemical, thermal, microbial and many others. They all aim to reduce the residual oil saturation in the reservoirs to increase Expected Ultimate Recovery (EUR) and Recovery Factor. Seismic stimulation is also one of the techniques which follow the underlying principle of reduction of residual oil saturation. The interest in Seismic or Vibrational stimulation is a few decades old, primarily with research projects being carried out in the 50's in the United States and Russia where effect of earthquakes and Human induced shocks on oil production was studied and various reports were published postulating the underlying principle for the process.
Mud Gas Isotope Logging (MGIL) is a gas fingerprinting technique that uses isotopic analyses of mud stream. The primary purpose of MGIL is to assess the extent of a reservoir and identify communication with any other formations. A Gas chromatograph is the main component used in MGIL. Although analysis using a GC will give amounts of methane, ethane, propane (paraffins); napthenes and aromatics are not explicitly analyzed. Also it is very difficult to distinguish between wet gas, condensate and oil using present day GC instrumentation. Another critical element is the speed at which readings can be taken with typical GC cycles of 3-6 minutes which may lead to thin zones not being traced at high ROP. It is not possible with GC based methods to distinguish compounds that exist as a free phase in the pore system from those that may be dissolved in an aqueous pore fluid since GC does not measure a wide range of Carbon species. This paper proposes the use of Mass Spectrometry to analyze mud samples at wellsite. Samples can be analyzed to produce mass spectra of mass to charge ratio {MCR} across a range encompassing both abundant and trace inorganic and organic elements. MS holds a upper hand on GC because the latter does not provide chemical information, is comparatively slower compared to MS which gives real time results; and does not have baseline sensitivity to analyze fluid inclusions. MS also allows tracing of minute fractions of elements since MCR is unique for every element and compound. A further aspect of the paper is to create a chemical log which is a combination of species detected in the gas sample and species extracted from the mud system. Accordingly the chemical log can be used to influence drilling testing and well completion decisions. Some other applications of MGIL-MS include distinguishing between thermogenic & biogenic gas, monitoring H 2 S concentrations, identifying original fluid contact and CO 2 flood breakthrough detection.
Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery has been known to the industry for decades and yet the research has only been applied to a selected few pilots where analysis of the in situ Microbes was made. The advent of Bio-Genetic Mapping of Microbes has introduced us to various strains of bacteria that can be genetically altered to produce alkali and surfactant needed in chemical floods in much higher concentration than previously thought. We conducted some initial experiments from which the enhancement of recovery factor is significant. The results and data generated were then used in STARSTM a compositional reservoir simulator to model the effect of various by-products (Polymer, Surfactants) generated by microbes on the recovery process. The surfactants generated lead to reduction of Interfacial tension from 30 to 0.1 dynes/cm2, the polymers were found to have properties as seen in natural polymers like Xantha and were resistive to salinity as well. The detailed report would be summarized in the paper. It is interesting to note that the different species of microbes used were anaerobic and was suited to survive at temperature of up to 600° F thus making it possible for them to survive harsh environments. Thus an overall promising outlook providing alternative to expensive chemical floods is being presented with special application to depleted reservoirs. Introduction Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery is based on use of microbes for increasing recovery by reducing the interfacial tension by generation of in-situ surfactants, polymers to achieve favorable mobility ratio and other chemicals beneficial for the recovery process. Microbes have also been used in reservoirs known to have paraffin and asphaltene problems for well stimulation. The Microbes used are either developed in a culture in labs or microbes found in reservoirs are sampled and grown in labs and then injected into the reservoir with nutrients to further aid their growth in the reservoir. In certain cases microbes are known to give out gases like methane and CO2 which help in reduction of viscosity and mobilize oil which was earlier immobile. Recent studies into genome mapping of various species by researchers holds a promising future for the oil industry where the more than half of the oil is left in the reservoir and thus a potential target for MEOR.
The industry has come a long way since the inception of drilling from cable too rig to rotary drilling. The method of drilling has not changed at all in the last couple of decades. The advancement of technologies have lead to development of high power lasers which can be used to blast through the rock at rates greater than 200 ft/hr. We would like to introduce the a new laser drilling system which can drill a mono diameter hole and simultaneously build a casing around the wellbore using high pressure spray devices to spray a heat setting resin which is then pressed using a heated drum roll to give a perfect smooth casing wall. A second jet with low temperature air is used to cure the resin thus setting it faster than the conventional way.The resin is capable to sustain pressure up to 4885 psi and thus making it a likely candidate for HPHT wells. It is highly resistant to chemical corrosion and is non-rusting thus enhancing the life of the completion. The complete drill string design would be discussed in detail providing the next 21st century tool for the drilling industry to drill through any possible formation encountered.
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