Russia's Yarega Heavy Oil Field
In 1664, a grand embassy traveled from Holland to Russia. Nicholaas Witsen, a scientist and traveler, was a member of that party, and in 1687, he published, “The North and Eastern Tartary.” He wrote in that book, “The Ukhta River is a one-day travel from the Pechora River. There is a shallow place on the Ukhta River 18 miles from the portage where the water is stained with fat, appearing to be black oil.” In 1721, Gregory Cherepanov discovered an oil spring on the Ukhta River, and Tsar Peter the Great issued an order to inspect the oil spring and take samples for analysis. On 18 November 1745, the Mining Board of Russia granted Fedor Savelievich Pryadunov permission to build an oil plant on the Ukhta River. This was the beginning of the oil industry in Russia, in what is now the Yarega field.
The Yarega heavy-oil field was dis-covered in 1932. The field is located in Komi Republic, 20 km from the city of Ukhta. A prominent Soviet geologist, I.N. Strizhev, was a pioneer in discovering the field. The top of the terrigenous reservoir at the Yarega field is at 200 m true vertical depth (TVD). The rock properties have high permeability, oil saturation, and porosity. A dominant characteristic of the field is its high oil viscosity, 16000 mPa·s at the initial reservoir temperature of 6°C. The oil is heavy; in-situ density is 933 kg/m3, 945 kg/m3 at the surface. The gas ratio is 10–13 m3/ton.
At the initial field-development stage, attempts were made to drill wells from the surface to produce oil without any formation stimulation. Sixty-nine wells were drilled from two sites according to a 75- and 100-m triangle well-spacing pattern covering 43.4 hectares. The recovery factor after 10–12 years of development was only 0.017. Reservoir development from the surface without stimulation proved to be economically unjustified.
In 1934, the geologist A.V. Kulevsky proposed the idea of hot-water stimulation. Laboratory test results were encouraging, but insufficient technical and engineering support prevented the implementation of the thermal-stimulation technique in the field.
This article is dedicated to generalize the actual data obtained during the start up of production and testing processes conducted in the horizontal wells with the intelligent completion in the Permian-carboniferous heavy oil reservoir of the Usinsk field, located in the extreme north-east of European Russia. The applying intelligent equipment meets the aspirations to maximize the effectiveness of horizontal production wells during steam flooding.
Международный университет природы, общества и человека «Дубна» В статье описана возможность применени я трассерного метода для определения качества разработки нефтяных пластов. Исследования проводились для одного месторождения Среднего Поволжья. Результаты интерпретации данных трассерных исследований получены с применением специального программного обеспечения "ИНДИКАТОР".
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.