History Matching of a Successful Polymer Flood Pilot in the Pelican Lake Heavy Oil Field, Canada

Delaplace, Philippe; Delamaide, Eric; Roggero, F.; Renard, G.

doi:10.2118/166256-ms

Cited by 33 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…This mature and cost-effective Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) technique generally uses between 500 ppm to 3000 ppm of polymer and yields from 5 to 20% of additional Oil Originally in Place (OOIP). Many authors have reported the benefits of polymer flooding observed in various oil fields (Delaplace et al 2013, Al-Saadi et al 2012, Pandey et al 2012, Clemens et al 2013, Moe Soe Let et al 2012, Wang et al 2006, Laoroongroj et al 2014, Manichan 2013. In all these case studies, temperature did not exceed 65°C and the polymers used were based on acrylamide (AMD) and sodium acrylate (AA) chemistries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection of Customized Polymers to Enhance Oil Recovery from High Temperature Reservoirs

Gaillard¹,

Giovannetti²,

Leblanc³

et al. 2015

Day 3 Fri, November 20, 2015

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While polymer flooding has proven to be an effective technique to improve oil recovery from mature reservoirs, the new objective pursued by the main stakeholders consists now in optimizing the overall costs and decrease the risks associated to the implementation of chemical enhanced oil recovery methods. This is particularly true for reservoir conditions with high temperatures (above 85°C) using injection brine with high hardness.In such conditions, using specific robust polymers is necessary to ensure stability over months during propagation in reservoirs. These polymers containing Acrylamido-Tert-Butyl-Sulfonate (ATBS) and N-Vinyl Pyrrolidone (NVP) are more expensive than regular HPAM and have to be overdosed to reach target viscosities since their molecular weights are low. In extreme cases, the project can be aborted for economic reasons. However, many fields, especially in South America, have access to very soft injection brines with a total dissolved salt lower than 3000 ppm in many cases. Using such brine is a tremendous advantage for polymer flooding since less robust polymers can be selected and target viscosity can be achieved with low dosages. This paper describes the selection and evaluation of polymers dedicated to high temperature reservoir conditions (from 85°C to 140°C) using very low salinity brine in comparison with harder brine. A series of rheological, shear and thermal stability tests have been performed to select the most appropriate polymer for each case. The impact of the chemical composition and the microstructure shows that the incorporation of NVP is not necessarily required to ensure stability over 6 months above 100°C in soft brines. Results show as well that ATBS improves shear and thermal stability in both soft and hard brine conditions. Besides, the incorporation of thermo-responsive moieties in the polymer improves viscosity properties resulting in a lower dosage even at high temperature to reach target viscosity.The objective of the study is also to demonstrate the possibility to develop innovative and cost-effective polymers for each reservoir condition. It encompasses an early and particularly close cooperation between the polymer manufacturer and the company willing to improve oil recovery from its reservoirs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection of Customized Polymers to Enhance Oil Recovery from High Temperature Reservoirs

Gaillard¹,

Giovannetti²,

Leblanc³

et al. 2015

Day 3 Fri, November 20, 2015

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“…The use of anionic polyacrylamide (HPAM) as water viscosifier remains one of the cheapest technologies with an extra-cost estimated at 3-10 USD/bbl (Seright 2010, Wyatt 2008, Yuming et al 2013. Many results from field pilots and full field projects show the benefits of polymer injection for oil recovery (Morel et al 2012, Delaplace et al 2013, Al-Saadi et al 2012, Pandey et al 2012, Clemens et al 2013, Moe Soe Let et al 2012, Wang et al 2006. The goal is to increase the viscosity of the injected fluid, to improve the mobility control and the sweep efficiency in the reservoir (Sorbie 1991).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Water Soluble Anionic NVP Acrylamide Terpolymers for Use in Harsh EOR Conditions

Gaillard¹,

Giovannetti²,

Favero³

et al. 2014

All Days

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Water soluble anionic polymers are widely used as Mobility Control agents in EOR. However, their shear, salt, free radical and thermal stability limit their domain of application. A joint industrial effort has led to new optimized polymer compositions. The chemical structure has been designed to improve long term thermal and salt stability. The functional groups on the polymer chain are acrylamide (AM), sodium acrylate (AA), sodium acrylamido-tertiary-butyl sulfonate (ATBS) and N-vinyl pyrrolidone (NVP). The composition of the different groups was varied to produce different polymer prototypes. The bulk gel polymerization process used to produce at industrial scale EOR polymers has been fine-tuned using NMR structural analysis at different conversion rates. The best polymer candidates were submitted to stability tests. Thermal stability was investigated with residual oxygen between 0 and 200ppb at temperature up to 120°C and salinity up to 70 g/L TDS with high hardness. Results show that the joint presence of NVP and ATBS in specific amounts in the polymer structure improves thermal and salt stability. Some of the polymers, whose chemical structure was optimized to maximize stability, could withstand harsh reservoir conditions with little loss of viscosity for an aging time of at least 1 year. These species were then submitted to coreflood experiments and showed good propagation properties in a 100-150 mD carbonate rock. Results show that polymer flooding can be successful in reservoirs with high temperature and harsh salinity conditions. The thermal resistant polymers can be used for polymer, surfactant polymer floods and are promising for alkaline surfactant polymer systems as well. They may be beneficial to other oil and gas applications where heat and salt stability are needed. With this technology, polymer viscosity is stable while it propagates through the reservoir and a favorable mobility ratio is maintained from injectors to producers.

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“…First, for many of the largest polymer floods (e.g., Daqing, Shengli, Pelican Lake), no effort was made to eliminate dissolved oxygen or control oxidation in the injected polymer solutions. Because these low-temperature polymer floods were quite successful in recovering oil (Wang et al 2008, Wang et al 2011, Zhu et al 2013, DeLaplace et al 2013, it seems likely the HPAM polymers did not suffer severe degradation. Manichand et al (2013) demonstrated that HPAM solutions propagated more than 300 ft through a reservoir (at 38C) with no significant degradation even though the injected solutions were saturated with dissolved oxygen.…”

Section: No Action If Water Contains No Fe 2+mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Dissolved Iron and Oxygen on Stability of HPAM Polymers

Seright

Skjevrak

2014

All Days

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This paper describes an experimental study of the stability of an HPAM polymer and an HPAM-ATBS terpolymer in the presence of varying initial levels of dissolved oxygen (0 to 8000 parts per billion, ppb), Fe 2+ (0 to 220 parts per million, ppm), and Fe 3+ (0 to 172 ppm). A special method was developed to attain and confirm dissolved oxygen levels. Stability studies were performed at 23°C and 90°C. For Fe 2+ concentrations between 0 and 30 ppm, viscosity losses were insignificant after one week so long as the initial dissolved oxygen concentration was 200 ppb or less. Above this level, significant viscosity losses were seen, especially if iron was present. If the temperature is high, a greater need arises to strive for very low dissolved oxygen content. For samples stored for one week at 90°C with only 10-ppb initial dissolved oxygen, contact with steel caused HPAM-AMPS solution viscosity losses greater than 30%. In contrast at 23°C, contact with steel caused no significant degradation so long as the dissolved O 2 concentration was 1000 ppb or less. Several different methods are discussed to control oxidative degradation of polymers during field applications. We advocate physical means of excluding oxygen (e.g., stopping leaks, better design of fluid transfer, gas-blanketing, gas-stripping) over chemical means. Addition of Fe 3+ to polymer solutions caused immediate crosslinking. Since crosslinked polymers were never observed during our studies with Fe 2+ , we conclude that free Fe 3+ was not generated in sufficient quantities to form a visible gel.

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History Matching of a Successful Polymer Flood Pilot in the Pelican Lake Heavy Oil Field, Canada

Cited by 33 publications

References 8 publications

Selection of Customized Polymers to Enhance Oil Recovery from High Temperature Reservoirs

Selection of Customized Polymers to Enhance Oil Recovery from High Temperature Reservoirs

New Water Soluble Anionic NVP Acrylamide Terpolymers for Use in Harsh EOR Conditions

Effect of Dissolved Iron and Oxygen on Stability of HPAM Polymers

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