In-situ combustion in Bellevue field in Louisiana – History, current state and future strategies

Sharma, Jyotsna; Dean, Jordan; Aljaberi, Faisal; Altememee, Naser

doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2020.118992

Cited by 42 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These concentrations are high enough to cause corrosion in the long term or even to burn inside the HP well which could lead to explosion. These findings are in accordance with conventional ISC field data (Sharma et al 2021 ).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Use of two vertical injectors in place of a horizontal injector to improve the efficiency and stability of THAI in situ combustion process for producing heavy oils

Ado

2021

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The current commercial technologies used to produce heavy oils and bitumen are carbon-, energy-, and wastewater-intensive. These make them to be out of line with the global efforts of decarbonisation. Alternative processes such as the toe-to-heel air injection (THAI) that works as an in situ combustion process that uses horizontal producer well to recover partially upgraded oil from heavy oils and bitumen reservoirs are needed. However, THAI is yet to be technically and economically well proven despite pilot and semi-commercial operations. Some studies concluded using field data that THAI is a low-oil-production-rate process. However, no study has thoroughly investigated the simultaneous effects of start-up methods and wells configuration on both the short and long terms stability, sustainability, and profitability of the process. Using THAI validated model, three models having a horizontal producer well arranged in staggered line drive with the injector wells are simulated using CMG STARS. Model A has two vertical injectors via which steam was used for pre-ignition heating, and models B and C each has a horizontal injector via which electrical heater and steam were respectively used for pre-ignition heating. It is found that during start-up, ultimately, steam injection instead of electrical heating should be used for the pre-ignition heating. Clearly, it is shown that model A has higher oil production rates after the increase in air flux and also has a higher cumulative oil recovery of 2350 cm3 which is greater than those of models B and C by 9.6% and 4.3% respectively. Thus, it can be concluded that for long-term projects, model A settings and wells configuration should be used. Although it is now discovered that the peak temperature cannot in all settings tell how healthy a combustion front is, it has revealed that model A does indeed have far more stable, safer, and efficient combustion front burning quality and propagation due to the maintenance of very high peak temperatures of mostly greater than 600 °C and very low concentrations of produced oxygen of lower than 0.4 mol% compared to up to 2.75 mol% in model C and 1 mol% in model B. Conclusively, since drilling of, and achieving uniform air distribution in horizontal injector (HI) well in actual field reservoir are costly and impracticable at the moment, and that electrical heating will require unphysically long time before mobilised fluids reach the HP well as heat transfer is mainly by conduction, these findings have shown decisively that the easy-and-cheaper-to-drill two vertical injector wells configured in a staggered line drive pattern with the horizontal producer should be used, and steam is thus to be used for pre-ignition heating.

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Use of two vertical injectors in place of a horizontal injector to improve the efficiency and stability of THAI in situ combustion process for producing heavy oils

Ado

2021

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In general, the specific quantitative relationship between oil saturation and recovery is very complex, and the effects of oil saturation and viscosity on the size of the oil bank are quite complicated during the ISC process. Among all of the above-menionted combustion tube experiments, the oil saturation So = 0.3 is likely to obtain the most efficient ISC process with the highest oil recovery ratio, and the increase in oil saturation does not necessarily mean a greater oil recovery ratio …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among all of the above-menionted combustion tube experiments, the oil saturation So = 0.3 is likely to obtain the most efficient ISC process with the highest oil recovery ratio, and the increase in oil saturation does not necessarily mean a greater oil recovery ratio. 20 The cumulative liquid production rates for P1−P4 are 22.00, 52.14, 58.47, and 78.07 g, respectively, and the oil recovery ratios are 56.2, 54.7, 59.8, and 83.0%, respectively. The increase of permeability to some extent will reduce the flow resistance of the injection gas so as to facilitate a more intense and stable ISC process.…”

Section: Effect Of Oil Saturation and Permeability Onmentioning

confidence: 98%

Study on the Lower Limits of Physical Parameters for Heavy Oil Reservoirs during the In Situ Combustion Process

Zhao

Sun

et al. 2023

ACS Omega

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As an effective enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method in the late stage of the steam injection process, in situ combustion (ISC) has been verified by more and more researchers owing to its high recovery efficiency and low operation cost. However, the ISC process is prone to bringing about an unfavorable result with a low sweep efficiency and even an extinction process due to the complexity and uncertainty in oil and water distribution as well as the heterogeneity of the actual reservoir. In this work, combustion tube experiments combined with numerical simulations by CMG-STARS were conducted to study the influence of a reservoir′s physical parameters on the stability of ISC. It was found that the sustainability of the combustion process is sensitive to permeability and oil saturation, the lower limits of which are determined as 0.2 μm2 and 0.2, respectively. Then, a formula was preliminarily proposed as 0.25 ≤ So/K ≤ 0.8, which could be used as a reference of screening criteria in designing the ISC process.

show abstract

“…Monitoring the composition of the gases being produced in the HP well is essential not only with aim of determining valuable components, such as hydrogen as was shown to be produced in the Kerrobert's semi-commercial THAI process project (Turta et al, 2020;Wei et al, 2020), and to ensure emissions regulations are met such as in terms of H 2 S, CO 2 , and CO, but also to monitor the efficiency and burning characteristics and stability of the combustion (Sharma et al, 2021;Zhao et al, 2021). Furthermore, it permits decision about when to choke or shut in the HP well before the oxygen concentration reaches an unsafe level to permanently damage the well or cause safety problems.…”

Section: Oxygen Production and Utilisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving heavy oil production rates in THAI process using wells configured in a staggered line drive (SLD) instead of in a direct line drive (DLD) configuration: detailed simulation investigations

Ado

2021

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As governments around the world prepare for a transition period to a decarbonised energy and economic future, petroleum is needed to smoothen that transition. Based on the analysis of the International Energy Agency’s 2020 projections, around 770 billion barrels of oil are required to meet demand from now to 2040. However, according to British Petroleum’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2020, as at the end of 2019, the global total reserves of recoverable conventional and unconventional oils is approximately 1734 billion barrels. Out of that, the conventional easy-to-produce light oil accounts for only 30% (i.e. accounts for only 520.2 billion barrels). Therefore, the remaining 249.8 billion barrels of oil needed to satisfy demand up to 2040 must come from unconventional oils, namely heavy oils and bitumen. However, these unconventional resources are very difficult to produce and the current production methods have very high environmental footprints. Consequently, in accordance with climate crisis mitigations, the vast reserves of the virtually unexploited heavy oils and bitumen must be developed using advanced and greener extraction technologies, such as the yet-to-be-fully-understood THAI process which provides partial upgrading of heavy oil/bitumen via in situ combustion. Using validated numerical models which are developed using the CMG’s reservoir thermal simulator, the STARS, which is also used in this study, field scale reservoir simulations of the THAI process were performed with the wells arranged in staggered line drive (SLD) and direct line drive (DLD). Over the 834 days of operating time, the cumulative oil recovery in SLD is 32% of oil originally in place (OOIP) which is equivalent to 26,100 m3 whilst that in DLD is 27% OOIP. This shows that more oil (i.e. an additional 5% OOIP) was cumulatively recovered in SLD compared to in DLD model. It is found that smaller reservoir volume was swept by the combustion front in DLD and thus making the heat-affected reservoir volume smaller than that in SLD model. Furthermore, in DLD, due to the nearness of the injector well to the toe of the horizontal producer (HP) well, oxygen production began much earlier, compared to in the SLD. It is also found that the temperature of the mobile oil zone is higher in the SLD model compared to that in the DLD model. This implies that higher quality oil is produced when the wells are configured in the SLD pattern. Therefore, this first-of-a-kind work has shown that SLD arrangement is far more efficient, safer, and produces higher quality oil than DLD pattern and that actual process engineering designs should use SLD wells configuration.

show abstract

In-situ combustion in Bellevue field in Louisiana – History, current state and future strategies

Cited by 42 publications

References 4 publications

Use of two vertical injectors in place of a horizontal injector to improve the efficiency and stability of THAI in situ combustion process for producing heavy oils

Use of two vertical injectors in place of a horizontal injector to improve the efficiency and stability of THAI in situ combustion process for producing heavy oils

Study on the Lower Limits of Physical Parameters for Heavy Oil Reservoirs during the In Situ Combustion Process

Improving heavy oil production rates in THAI process using wells configured in a staggered line drive (SLD) instead of in a direct line drive (DLD) configuration: detailed simulation investigations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About