History Match of the Liaohe Oil Field SAGD Operation - A Vertical- Horizontal Well Reservoir Production Machine

Abstract

With the decline of conventional oil production, developing and producing heavy oil resources efficiently is becoming more important. The Liaohe Heavy Oil Field steam operation is unique – it started with cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) operation that transitioned into a continuous steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) operation. With respect to oil production in China, this field is considered critical for heavy oil production and technology development. Cyclic steam injection was initially done through vertical wells. This had the benefit that it provided a good start-up of depletion chambers in the reservoir. These chambers then grew under gravity drainage after continuous steam injection (through the vertical wells) and continuous production through a set of horizontal wells was started. Controlled and deliberate transition from CSS to a gravity drainage process with the objective of optimizing energy intensity (GJ injected per unit volume oil produced) with control enabled through production and thermocouple data is a smart field operation which we refer to as a Reservoir Production Machine (RPM). In this paper, as a first step to understand the operation and its impact on the reservoir, we have history matched the CSS operation based on the injection and production data from field. The use of vertical steam injection wells (formerly the CSS wells) in combination with horizontal production wells operated in a SAGD mode of operation is explored. The history-matched model can be used to develop automated RPM technologies to optimize not only energy intensity but also emissions intensity.

Feasibility Study of Using Polymer to Improve SAGD Performance in Oil Sands with Top Water

“…In the SAGD process, the combination of vertical injectors and horizontal producers were tested in the field as an effective process (Bao et al 2012). Case 11 and case 12 were developed to analyze the effect of sink hole well pattern on the production performance in the reservoir with top water zone.…”

Optimization of a Vertical-Horizontal Heavy Oil Thermal Operation by using Automated Field-scale Control

“…The reservoir simulation model is a history matched reservoir model documented by Bao et al (2012) which was solved in a commercial thermal reservoir simulator (CMG, 2012). The reservoir model was originally constructed from a geological model constructed in a commercial geomodeling package (Schlumberger, 2011) consisting of a domain with sixty 10 m dimension cells in the X-direction by fifty-five 10 m dimension cells in the Y-direction and twenty-five 5.5 m dimension cells in the vertical direction.…”

“…The system studied here is the same one as that examined by Yang (2006) and Bao et al (2012). The operation was conducted in the Block Du84 in the Shu1 area located in the middle section of the Qishu upper step at the western slope in western depression of the Liaohe Basin in Northeastern China.…”

“…Here, feedback control to enhance steam conformance and oil production rates has been explored by using a detailed threedimensional, history-matched, model of the Liaohe oil field described by Bao et al (2012). The focus of the automated control has been on the vertical-horizontal hybrid well steam-assisted gravity drainage part of the overall recovery process.…”

Enhanced heavy oil recovery for carbonate reservoirs integrating cross-well seismic – A synthetic Wafra case study

“…Bao et al (2013) history matched the SAGD operation of the Liaohe Field in China in order to optimize the thermal injection process as well as the energy intensity of the injected steam. Hiebert et al (2014) presented a history matching study for determining the size, shape, and growth of the steam chamber in a SAGD project, showing that the incorporation of 4D seismic surveys assists in improving the categorization of the reservoir and the evolution of the steam chamber.…”