Evaluation of Rock/Fracture Interaction: During Steam Injection Through Vertical Hydraulic Fractures

Abstract

The design, results, and analysis of a steamdrive pilot in the South Belridge diatomite, Kern County, California, are reviewed. Pilot results demonstrate that steam can be injected across a 1,000-ft-tall diatomite column using hydraulically fractured wells and that significant oil is produced in response to steaming. A computationally simple numerical model is proposed and used to analyze reservoir heating and volumetric sweep by steam. Results from the analysis show that hydraulic fractures undergoing steam injection can be dynamic and asymmetrical.

Supporting technology for enhanced oil recovery for thermal processes

“…We only consider isothermal, oil-free systems. This allows easy comparison with our previous experimental and simulation results (Kovscek and Radke, 1994; Kovscek et al, 1995). Numerous verification exercises are performed to discover the role foam plays in gas displacement through zones of contrasting permeability and to highlight the interplay of foam-bubble texture and gas mobility.…”

“…These range from population balance methods Patzek, 1988;Chang, et al, 1990;Kovscek et al, 1995;Ettinger, R.A., 1989;to percolation models (Rossen, 1940;Rossen and Gauglitz, 1990;Chou, 1990) and from applying so-called fractional flow theories (Rossen et aZ., 1991;Zhou, and Rossen, 1992) to semi-empirical alteration of gas-phase mobilities (Patzek and Koinis, 1990;Fisher, et al, 1990;Patzek and Myhill, 1989;Mohammadi et al, 1993;Mohammadi and Coombe, 1992;Marfoe and Kazemi, 1987;Mahmood et al, 1986). Of these four methods, only the population balance method and network or percolation models arise from first principles.…”

“…This geometry applies to a reservoir with continuous impermeable shale breaks and to parallel core experiments in the laboratory. The high permeability layer is assigned a permeability of 1.3 pm2 which is identical to the permeability of the Boise sandstone cores used in our laboratory (Kovscek and Radke, 1994;Kovscek et aL, 1995).…”

“…They report increased production of 5.5 The population-balance method for modeling foam in porous media (Falls, et al, 1988; Patzek, 1988 Kovscek et al, 1995). This initial work detailed the development of a mechanistic model for foam displacement that was easily implemented, fit simply into the framework of current reservoir simulators, and employed a minimum of physically meaningful parameters.…”

Automating Continuous Steam Injection in the Diatomite Formation, Midway Sunset Field, California

“…2, 3 Stanford researchers have done quite a lot of study on the impacts of steaming the diatomite. 4,5,6 Based on the published results of the other pilots, lab studies, and Berry's own cyclic diatomite work, injectivity was anticipated to decrease during the early phases of the pilot. The desired steam injection control system would need to handle the changing pressures with minimal manual adjustments by the operators while maintaining a desired rate of injection.…”