Experimental Investigation of Solvent Addition to Vertical Steam Drive (VSD) as an Improved Method for Thermal Recovery of Extra-heavy Oil/bitumen

Lastovka, Vaclav; Hooijkaas, T.; Dorp, Johan van; Verlaan, Marco

doi:10.3997/2214-4609.201412165

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Extensive studies have been carried out to understand the reservoir heterogeneity, both for lithology and rock mechanics. Moreover, the literature has proposed some useful strategies to improve the steam conformance, such as high-temperature gas foam with steam [8,9], an oil viscosity reducer or solvent to increase the injection capacity and reduce the fractures [10][11][12], and thermoreversible gel to plug the steam channels [13]. Polymer gels are potential plug agents to solve near wellbore issues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Investigation of Steam Conformance Evolution in Vertical-CSS and Optimization of Profile Improvement Agents

Guo

2022

Applied Sciences

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Production performance of heavy oil deposits in Xinjiang oilfield developed by vertical-well cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) is increasingly challenged by reservoir heterogeneity, which is comprised of original sedimental heterogeneity and steam-induced heterogeneity. In order to understand the impacts of sedimental heterogeneity and high-speed steam injection to steam conformance, and strategies to maximize steam swept volume, a series of experiments were designed and implemented. Three-tube coreflooding experiments were performed to study the steam displacement dynamics under heterogeneous conditions, and a high-temperature plugging agent was developed. The coreflooding experiments indicate that the injection conformance deteriorates once the steam breakthrough occurs in a high-permeability tube, leaving the oil in the medium and low permeability tubes being surpassed. The optimized plugging agent could resist high temperatures over 260 °C and its compressive strength was 13.14 MPa, which is higher than maximal steam injection pressure. The plugging rate of high permeability core was greater than 99.5% at 220–280 °C with a breakthrough pressure gradient over 25 MPa/m. The field test validated its profile improvement feasibility with cyclic oil, 217.6% of the previous cycle. The plugging agent optimized in this study has significant potential for similar heterogeneous reservoirs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Investigation of Steam Conformance Evolution in Vertical-CSS and Optimization of Profile Improvement Agents

Guo

2022

Applied Sciences

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“…Solvent co-injection has been identified as an economical method to improve the efficiency of this process. The details of the solvent co-injection process have been described previously in literature [3][4][5]. In an early phase of the steam drive, a slug of hydrocarbon condensate (diluent) is co-injected with the steam.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solvent Enhanced Steam Drive: Experiences from the First Field Pilot in Canada

et al. 2015

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In recent years, the addition of a hydrocarbon condensate (C4 to C20) to steam operations (such as CSS and SAGD) in heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs has emerged as potential technology to improve not only oil recovery and but also energy efficiency. Shell has extended the idea of solvent addition to a steam drive process, applied it for the first time in the Peace River area in Canada, and obtained evidence of oil uplift in the patterns where solvent was injected. However, piloting this new technology in a brown field had many challenges, especially when evaluating its main economic factors: production increase and solvent recovery.To overcome these challenges, emphasis was put on experimental design, data acquisition and quality, and production surveillance. The pilot conditions were designed to increase the probability of success on the two economic factors aforementioned within a short period of time. The assessment of the pilot required that all production streams (emulsion and casing vent gas) were metered and frequently sampled to measure their respective compositions. Cross calibration of metered and sampled water cuts was essential in obtaining conclusive production uplift data. Automatic proportional samplers were successfully deployed under these challenging conditions to obtain representative samples. Due to the overlap of solvent and bitumen components, special attention was taken to allocate hydrocarbon production into bitumen and solvent. New in-house developed algorithms were tested to accurately calculate this split.The addition of a 4 month concentrated slug of solvent in two steam drive patterns resulted in a significant production uplift when compared to two adjacent patterns with steam-only injection. Solvent recovery is still ongoing and exceeds original expectations. Frequent sampling allowed the detection of several trends, including bitumen composition changes during solvent injection and solvent fractionation in the reservoir.

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Solvent Enhanced Steam Drive: Results from the First Field Pilot in Canada

Díaz

Verlaan

Hedden

2016

Day 2 Tue, March 22, 2016

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A solvent enhanced steam drive pilot has been executed in the Peace River area in Canada, where co-injection of steam and solvent was deployed in two inverted 5-spot 5-acre steam drive patterns. The results were compared to two adjacent patterns were only steam was injected. The pilot involved extensive metering and sampling surveillance during 1.5 years. After several months of starting the steam drive a large slug of solvent was injected, subsequently followed by steam drive. Several challenges emerged with respect to data accuracy and acquisition, inherent to the first deployment of this technology and of the pilot being a brown field project. To overcome these issues, a data uncertainty management plan was made aided by reservoir simulation. The pilot demonstrated significant bitumen uplift due to solvent injection and solvent recovery from the reservoir in line with expectations. A reservoir simulation model with sound physical principles was constructed confirming bitumen uplift estimates and solvent recovery trends seen in the field.

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Experimental Investigation of Solvent Addition to Vertical Steam Drive (VSD) as an Improved Method for Thermal Recovery of Extra-heavy Oil/bitumen

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Experimental Investigation of Steam Conformance Evolution in Vertical-CSS and Optimization of Profile Improvement Agents

Experimental Investigation of Steam Conformance Evolution in Vertical-CSS and Optimization of Profile Improvement Agents

Solvent Enhanced Steam Drive: Experiences from the First Field Pilot in Canada

Solvent Enhanced Steam Drive: Results from the First Field Pilot in Canada

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