Design Approach and Early Field Performance for a Solvent-Assisted SAGD Pilot at Cold Lake, Canada

Dickson, Jasper L.; Clingman, Scott; Dittaro, Larry Mark; Jaafar, Ali E; Yerian, Jeffrey Alan; Perlau, Darrel

doi:10.2118/150639-ms

Cited by 20 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The start-ups of the SAGD processes are the same for all of the cases. First, (1) the duration of the preheating process lasts 75 days under 250 • C. Second, the steam trap control is 10 • C. Third, the temperature of the steam is 250 • C and the steam quality is 0.9 [43][44][45][46][47][48]. The maximum production rate is 550 m 3 /day, which is the capacity of the production pump used in this field.…”

Section: Numerical Simulation Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Simulation Study on Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage Performance in a Heavy Oil Reservoir with a Bottom Water Zone

Zhou

Yuan

et al. 2017

Energies

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Abstract:In the Pikes Peak oil field near Lloydminster, Canada, a significant amount of heavy oil reserves is located in reservoirs with a bottom water zone. The properties of the bottom water zone and the operation parameters significantly affect oil production performance via the steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process. Thus, in order to develop this type of heavy oil resource, a full understanding of the effects of these properties is necessary. In this study, the numerical simulation approach was applied to study the effects of properties in the bottom water zone in the SAGD process, such as the initial gas oil ratio, the thickness of the reservoir, and oil saturation of the bottom water zone. In addition, some operation parameters were studied including the injection pressure, the SAGD well pair location, and five different well patterns: (1) two corner wells, (2) triple wells, (3) downhole water sink well, (4) vertical injectors with a horizontal producer, and (5) fishbone well. The numerical simulation results suggest that the properties of the bottom water zone affect production performance extremely. First, both positive and negative effects were observed when solution gas exists in the heavy oil. Second, a logarithmical relationship was investigated between the bottom water production ratio and the thickness of the bottom water zone. Third, a non-linear relation was obtained between the oil recovery factor and oil saturation in the bottom water zone, and a peak oil recovery was achieved at the oil saturation rate of 30% in the bottom water zone. Furthermore, the operation parameters affected the heavy oil production performance. Comparison of the well patterns showed that the two corner wells and the triple wells patterns obtained the highest oil recovery factors of 74.71% and 77.19%, respectively, which are almost twice the oil recovery factors gained in the conventional SAGD process (47.84%). This indicates that the optimized SAGD process with the two corner wells and the triple wells pattern is able to improve SAGD production performance in a heavy oil reservoir with a bottom water zone.

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Section: Numerical Simulation Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Simulation Study on Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage Performance in a Heavy Oil Reservoir with a Bottom Water Zone

Zhou

Yuan

et al. 2017

Energies

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“…Butane was employed as the solvent in the field for co-injection with steam. The project could be considered one of the world's largest application of enhanced thermal recovery methods and the results will provide considerable insight in technical and logistical challenges of Solvent-Assisted thermal methods (Boone et al, 2011;Dickson et al, 2011). It appears that the process was operated at pressure 2500-4000 Kpa with almost 15% by mass of Butane (McCormack, 2007).…”

Section: Field Testsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They concluded that low pressure multi-component ES-SAGD at the right concentration (mostly at low concentration) is fairly competitive with SAGD at a high pressure. Pathak et al (2010;2011) conducted a series of hot-solvent injection experiments. The energy requirements of SAGD experiments were reduced by 30-40% in all experiments.…”

Section: Experimental Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of efforts has been made to use analytical methods to better understand the role of different types of the solvents near the steam/oil interface (Gupta and Gittins, 2011;Jyotsna and Gates, 2010;Rabiei et al, 2012;Sharma and Gates, 2011;. Sharma et al ( 2010 ;2011) derived a simple model to describe dynamics of thermo-solvent coupling effects in the mobile oil zone at the edge of a steam-solvent chamber. Gupta et al (2011) developed a semi-analytical approach to obtain the optimal solvent in SA-SAGD processes.…”

Section: Analytical Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Critical Review of Hybrid Steam-Solvent Processes to Recover Heavy Oil

et al. 2012

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Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is the main commercial technology used for in-situ recovery of Canadian heavy oil and Bitumen. It is commercially proven and delivers high oil rates and high ultimate recoveries. One of the long-term concerns with the SAGD process is high energy intensity and related environmental impacts. Hybrid processes have been developed to take partial advantage of steam and solvent processes while introducing a more efficient and more economically viable recovery methods. Several processes such as Propane-SAGD, Expanding Solvent-SAGD (ES-SAGD), Solvent-Aided Process (SAP), Liquid Addition to Steam to Enhance Recovery (LASER) and Steam-Alternating-Solvent (SAS) were proposed; some of them currently under pilot test. Hybrid steam-solvent processes aim to accelerate oil production rate with lower cost than SAGD and also increase the ultimate oil recovery. Despite remarkable amount of laboratory and computational studies on these processes, there was no extensive critical review of the knowledge obtained for more than a decade. The current level of understanding of the hybrid processes and knowledge around the fundamental physics and mechanisms involved are not fully satisfactory. We believe that a critical review of the status of the hybrid processes will fill the gap by shedding the light on the deficiencies and the limitations of the process, further development areas, and new research topics. Analytical, numerical simulations, laboratory modeling efforts along with pilot test results are summarized. In addition, the main technical challenges of different aspects of hybrid steam-solvent processes are analyzed at different levels. In this paper, special attention is given to a) The effect of reservoir and operational parameters, b) solvent injection strategies, c) The inconsistency between laboratory, simulation and field results and d) problems faced in numerical modeling (capturing the physics of heat and mass transfer). It is believed that a good compilation of the records produced over one decade will constitute a useful reference for the industry and academics. Analytical, simulation, laboratory studies and reported field data strongly support hybrid steamsolvent processes. However, the results are mixed at different level levels and there exists some inconsistencies. The cost of the solvent retained in the reservoir is the major concern and the economics of selected hybrid steam-solvent process for a specific reservoir has to be verified using available tools. The main challenges are verifying effective mixing of the solvent with the in-situ bitumen, managing the solvent placement and distribution in the reservoir, reliably determining the incremental benefit of solvent-addition and ensuring economic solvent recovery.

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“…Coinjection of steam and solvent could further widen the applicability of solvent to extra-heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs. A few pilot tests for the coinjection were reported in the literature (Gupta et al 2005;Gupta and Gittins 2006;Dickson et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient Displacement of Heavy Oil using Three Hydrocarbon Phases

Okuno

2013

All Days

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Mixtures of oil with solvent gas can exhibit three-hydrocarbon-phase behavior at reservoir conditions, where the solvent-rich liquid (L 2 ) phase coexists with the gaseous (V) and oleic (L 1 ) phases. Three-hydrocarbon-phase behavior has been studied in the literature for CO 2 floods and enriched gas floods at relatively low temperatures. Prior research on heavy-oil displacement with enriched gas presented that displacement efficiency at a given throughput can be non-monotonic with respect to gas enrichment. Slim-tube experiments for such displacements showed that oil recovery increased first, then decreased, and increased again with increasing gas enrichment. An optimum displacement with a high efficiency of more than 90% was observed when three-hydrocarbon-phase flow was present. However, detailed mechanisms for such an optimum displacement with three phases have not been explained in the literature.In this research, we investigate mass transfer on multiphase transitions between two and three phases for threehydrocarbon-phase displacements. Simple conditions are derived for the multiphase transitions that yield high local displacement efficiency by three hydrocarbon phases. The derivation is based on the generalized jump conditions for a multiphase transition shock from analytical theory of one-dimensional gas injection. The conditions derived are applied to explain non-monotonic oil recovery in quaternary displacements and the West Sak oil displacements.Oil recovery at a given throughput can be non-monotonic with respect to pressure or gas enrichment. Such a nonmonotonic trend can occur when local oil displacement by three hydrocarbon phases becomes more efficient, but slower, with decreasing pressure or decreasing gas enrichment. An optimum pressure or enrichment can occur as a consequence of the balance between the local displacement efficiency and the propagation rate of three hydrocarbon phases. The West Sak oil displacement with enriched gas studied in this research yields a high displacement efficiency of more than 90% at 1.5 hydrocarbon-pore-volumes injected at 53% methane dilution.

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Design Approach and Early Field Performance for a Solvent-Assisted SAGD Pilot at Cold Lake, Canada

Cited by 20 publications

References 4 publications

Numerical Simulation Study on Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage Performance in a Heavy Oil Reservoir with a Bottom Water Zone

Numerical Simulation Study on Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage Performance in a Heavy Oil Reservoir with a Bottom Water Zone

A Critical Review of Hybrid Steam-Solvent Processes to Recover Heavy Oil

Efficient Displacement of Heavy Oil using Three Hydrocarbon Phases

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