The Athabasca Oil Sands Project Joint Venture (AOSP JV) owners – Shell Canada Energy (Shell), Chevron Canada Limited (Chevron) and Marathon Oil Sands L.P. (Marathon) – are advancing front-end development plans of a fully integrated carbon capture, pipeline and storage project in Alberta called the Quest CCS Project. A Final Investment Decision for Quest is scheduled for 2012. Quest is designed as a fully integrated CCS project in the oil sands sector involving CO2 capture at the Scotford upgrader near Fort Saskatchewan, pipeline transportation northeast from Scotford and CO2 storage in a deep saline formation zone, the Basal Cambrian Sand. Over the expected lifetime of 25 years, the project will capture and store up to 1.1 Mt of CO2 per year from the steam methane reformer units at the existing Scotford upgrader and at the upgrader’s expansion currently under construction Conventional volumetric methods for the pore space assessment of CO2 storage, such as the guidance provided by the 2008 Carbon Sequestration ATLAS of the United States and Canada, are good tools in estimating the pore space available, while also considering empirical DOE ranges for storage efficiency, such as area and vertical sweep efficiency, gravity contact efficiency and microscopic displacement efficiency. Such assessment would suggest a CO2 storage capacity of the Basal Cambrian Sand at Quest of approximately 7 Mt per township (6 miles x 6 miles). However, such an estimate is of a static nature, not taking into account dynamic system constraints such as required injection rates, bottom-hole pressure constraints and associated well count and well spacing, including pressure interference and regional pore pressure increase. Dynamic reservoir simulation has been performed, for a variety of subsurface realizations, covering the full range of current subsurface uncertainties, with the aim to optimize the development while also estimating the required pore space for CO2 storage. Following the concept of linking the required pore space to pore pressure increase, rather than CO2 plume extension, resulted in a significant reduction of pore space utilization in the Basal Cambrian Sand from the initial 7 Mt per township to only 0.67 Mt per township and will have a potential impact on additional CCS developments in the region.
Many oil and gas fields have long been suffering from sand production due to either the absence or failure of primary well sand control. To avoid mobilizing costly work-over rig to pull out the tubing, operators have tried various thru-tubing remedial sand control. The well's condition such as sands accumulation and space constraints due to small inner diameter of tubing always make this remedial job challenging. It is not surprising that the results are not all satisfactory. Among the industry-recognized remedial sand control, Stand Alone Screen (SAS) is the simplest and the cheapest method. Many SAS have been installed but most were failed with screen erosion as the main failure mechanism. Flowing high velocity fluid with sands wears out the screen fast making it impossible for the sands to bridge and to create formation sand pack around the screen. Ceramic Sand Screen (CSS) technology which was recently introduced to the industry aims to address this erosion issue. Having more than ten times hardness of stainless steel, sintered silicon carbide ceramic material in CSS offers superior resistance to wear. The pilot was conducted by installing CSS in three (3) selected wells with sand production history. While waiting for acoustic sand monitoring installation, the wells were put on production with the same choke size and regular manual samplings were conducted to monitor the sand production. The acoustic sand monitoring campaign began in November 2017. Sands production was carefully monitored during the process to determine the final choke size at which the wells would continuously produce. In the middle of the campaign due to adverse weather conditions, all non-essential personnel had to be abruptly demobilised from the field leaving acoustic sensors hooked-up to the respective flow line. This gave opportunity to have unplanned extended sand monitoring window. Loss of Primary Containment (LOPCs) occurred in two CSS wells not long after that. In one the choke body was heavily eroded and the other well had a punched hole at the first elbow of the flowline. These incidents prompted full investigation to be conducted. This included pulling out the installed CSS and performed tear down analysis. Acoustic sand monitoring that just happened to be available in one of the wells proved to be critical in understanding the CSS failure. The paper presents briefly on the CSS pilot project, the chronology of events until the incident, sands production trend from the acoustic sand monitoring. Using all available information, the paper provides details analysis on CSS failure mechanism.
The world has been suffering from Green House Gases (GHG) emissions for years in the past and for years to come. Governments have started to show their real commitment through Carbon Tax, Energy Transition plans and more renewables and cleaner energy sources to replace the carbon intensive operations [1-2]. Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has pledge to have a Net Zero emissions by 2050 with an aspirational target to reduce 50% of the current emissions by 2030. Asset M has gone through a regress assessment and opportunity identification workshops to pinpoint the strategic directions moving forward to meet that aspiration. Asset M is the 2nd Largest asset in PDO in terms of Oil and Water production. Over 0.9 mln bbls of Water are recycled on daily basis with around 54 MWs of power consumed. In line with PDO aspiration towards NZE, Asset M has pledge to reduce its emissions from Scope 1 & 2 by 50% in 2030 and net zero by 2050. As of today, Asset M is the most energy efficient asset in PDO with a GHG intensity of 0.12 t/t. The objective of this paper is to shed light on some of the best practices followed to achieve reduction in Energy consumption and GHGE in general. In 2019, Asset M emissions were estimated around 0.55 mln_tCO2e, these are mainly linked to power consumptions (70%) and flaring (15%). Due to the large Growth planned in HCM, Asset M is expected to grow additional 0.25 mln_tCO2e by 2030. To align with PDO NZE by 2050, the team took the lead to build a sustainable GHG reduction road map. The work has been structured under the Strategic A3 approach with clear metrics and timelines. A simple approach was developed to focus on the top 4 main themes: Flaring, Power consumption, Portfolio assessment and EE Awareness. Well Reservoir & Facility Management (WRFM) in addition to Fail-Less initiative were key in reducing the energy consumption from Artificially Lifted wells by the means of Conversion to a more Energy efficient Artificial-Lift types such as PCP/Rotaflex systems, PMM motors and more. cEOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery) is another front that has proven successful improvement not only in increasing the oil production but also in reducing the GHGE. Field-A Polymer set a record emission intensity in PDO with average of 0.03 tCO2e/tHC. Asset M is leading the Polymer thematic study to accelerate cEOR across Multiple fields in South leading to further GHGE reduction. A black belt (6-Sigma as part of Lean projects) was initiated in 2021 to investigate the possibility of reducing the energy consumption of the DWD pumps which are contributing 30% to Asset M energy consumption. The project managed to slash the consumption of these pumps by 25% (4 MW). This approach has paved the way for additional scope across PDO with additional 10-15 MW reduction with zero Cost.
Produced water is an inevitable by-product from oil wells and the challenge lies in how to best manage it both economically and environmentally. A large cluster in the South of Oman with around 30 fields and more than 2000 active wells has a daily water production rate of more than 100,000 m3/d. Management of this produced water is crucial in prolonging oil production and maximizing recovery from these fields. A certain strategy is being followed where different initiatives are taken to manage the produced water. The water management strategy been followed is to Reduce, Relocate and Reuse, the 3 Rs. The 3 Rs strategy has been implemented in the cluster by taking the initiatives below: REDUCE: Implementation of Autonomous Inflow Control Valves Technology: which has resulted in an average water reduction of 70% while increasing the oil production by 10% where implemented. It has also resulted in lower water management costs and lower Green-house Gases intensity. REDUCE: Frequent Well-by-Well economic evaluation: where all oil wells are screened in terms of economical oil cut-off breakeven value with respect to well operating cost and then re-visiting the identified wells. The economic screening also accounts for CO2 penalties to drive GHG and energy efficiency. As well as continuous waterflood optimization by carrying out structured reviews, to promote high efficiency injectors and demote low efficiency injectors. REUSE: Increasing waterflooded reservoirs’ throughput rate: less Deep-Water Disposal and hence less power consumption for DWD pumps and lower fields’ Greenhouse Gases intensity. REUSE: Water re-allocation and use for agriculture/biofuel and other industrial use building on successful projects across Oman. This type of use provides great enablers for deep water disposal phase-out, hence positive impact on GHG & energy management. Taking such initiatives has resulted in reducing Deep Water Disposal, optimization of rates (balancing offtake/intake) as an output of the Well-by-Well economic evaluation and an increase in oil production as an output of technology implementation. This has also led to reducing Greenhouse Gases Emissions, minimizing energy inputs, and reducing treatment costs since these initiatives are directly linked to Energy Management.
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