Numerical Investigation of Potential Injection Strategies To Reduce Shale Barrier Impacts on SAGD Process

Li, Weiqiang; Mamora, Daulat Debataraja; Li, Yamin; Qiu, Fangda

doi:10.2118/133298-pa

Cited by 31 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“… 25 However, very few studies are available regarding the impact of shales on ES-SAGD performance. 26 − 29 A major industry standard to assess the performance of SAGD and ES-SAGD is the steam oil ratio (SOR). The conventional range of the SOR for an efficient SAGD process in a homogeneous reservoir tends to fall between 2 and 3.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various studies have been done to demonstrate the impact of shale barriers on SAGD performance. − Kumar and Hassanzadeh have presented a detailed literature review on the impact of shale barriers on SAGD and ES-SAGD . However, very few studies are available regarding the impact of shales on ES-SAGD performance. − A major industry standard to assess the performance of SAGD and ES-SAGD is the steam oil ratio (SOR). The conventional range of the SOR for an efficient SAGD process in a homogeneous reservoir tends to fall between 2 and 3.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bitumen Recovery Performance of SAGD and Butane- and Hexane-Aided SAGD in the Presence of Shale Barriers

Kumar

2022

ACS Omega

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Oil and gas formations are commonly found to be heterogeneous, and one of the most common occurrences of reservoir heterogeneity is the presence of shale barriers. Shale barriers typically have very low permeability and high initial water saturation. Due to low permeability, these barriers obstruct the oil drainage path, specifically in thermal recovery methods such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). In addition to flow assistance, they also lead to heat losses due to absorption by the high initial water saturation. Expanding solvent steam-assisted gravity drainage (ES-SAGD) is a hybrid technique comprising solvent co-injection along with steam. Solvent being in the vapor phase can potentially overcome the restricted path due to the presence of shale barriers. This paper presents a numerical simulation study on comparison between SAGD and ES-SAGD in the presence of shale barriers. SAGD and ES-SAGD with hexane and butane are numerically simulated for 240 lognormally generated shale realizations. First, both recovery processes are analyzed over the whole simulation period. Additionally, they have also been evaluated at multiple cumulative steam oil ratio cut-offs at 2, 2.5, 3, and 3.5. Transition points are defined and explained to cluster the shale density/fractions based on similar behaviors. It was shown that the oil that cannot be mobilized and produced by SAGD because shale barriers can be reached by the vaporized solvent through tortuous paths and recovered. Also, thermal losses are reduced because of lower steam chamber temperature. This led to efficient results for ES-SAGD over SAGD in heterogeneous formations.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bitumen Recovery Performance of SAGD and Butane- and Hexane-Aided SAGD in the Presence of Shale Barriers

Kumar

2022

ACS Omega

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“…Since the massive expansion of commercialized SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) projects in Canada and China in 2008 [1], most deposits with less heterogeneities have been developed, leaving marginal deposits with poor reservoir properties and strong heterogeneity [2,3]. As the steam chamber shape is sensitive to the reservoir properties [4,5], poor sedimentation conditions always result in uneven steam chamber conformance and low oil recovery factor [6][7][8]. In order to produce the bypassed deposits of existing SAGD wellpair, infilled wells are suggested to deploy in the interwellpair region [9][10][11][12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Infilled Vertical Well LASER-Assisted SAGD

Ding¹,

Guo³

2022

Geofluids

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In the SAGD process with dual horizontal wells in heterogeneous reservoirs, the injection pressure of steam huff-n-puff by infilled interwell vertical wells is too high, and the heat communication between SAGD wellpairs and infilled wells is too long, which leads to a series of problems. The solvent-assisted vertical well stimulation (LASER) technology is proposed to solve the problems above. The solvent formula was optimized, and its key mechanism was studied by viscosity reduction experiments, multicomponent phase behavior experiments at high temperature and high pressure, and scaled two-dimensional physical experiments. The experimental results show that when adding 10% 2# or 3# solvent oil, the viscosity reduction of crude oil can reach 96.65% and 96.73%, respectively. The HTHP visualized phase behavior experiment results show that the mixture of low flash point solvent oil 2# with high flash point solvent oil 3# (volumetric ratio 3 : 2) has excellent high temperature oil solubility stability and is similar to water vapor phase behavior, so it is determined as the ideal formula. The scaled two-dimensional physical experiment results show that the solvent-assisted vertical well huff-n-puff has the key mechanism of reducing injection pressure and porous flow resistance, expanding the sweep region of injected fluid and accelerating thermal communication. The cycle of huff-n-puff was reduced from 6 to 3, which greatly shortened the thermal communication time. From the scaled physical experiments, the oil rate and the oil recovery of SAGD were improved by 19.86% and 6.3%, respectively. Field-scale numerical simulation was performed, and the production performance compared with SAGD and conventional infilled CSS-SAGD was investigated, which shows that by adding solvent into steam stimulation, 6 cycles were reduced, and the incremental oil recovery factor was 27.3% and 13.2%, respectively. The performance of accelerating thermal communication and production improvement by LASER has been validated by 4 SAGD wellpairs in field practice, and its long-term prediction result shows significant potential in similar heterogeneous SAGD reservoirs.

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“…The results showed the impact of type A is larger than that of type B and the impact can neglect when the size of shale barrier is small (less than 5 m). Later, Li et al (2011) studied effect of different sizes of barriers above the injector using 2D simulation. They found that the flow resistance along the barriers and the extra heat consumption were the major reasons for the barrier effects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Breccia interlayer effects on steam-assisted gravity drainage performance: experimental and numerical study

Zhang¹,

Kang²,

Liu

et al. 2021

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

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Currently, the reservoir heterogeneity is a serious challenge for developing oil sands with SAGD method. Nexen’s Long Lake SAGD project reported that breccia interlayer was widely distributed in lower and middle part of reservoir, impeding the steam chamber expansion and heated oil drainage. In this paper, two physical experiments were conducted to study the impact of breccia interlayer on development of steam chamber and production performance. Then, a laboratory scale numerical simulation model was established and a history match was conducted based on the 3D experimental results. Finally, the sensitivity analysis of thickness and permeability of breccia layer was performed. The influence mechanism of breccia layer on SAGD performance was analyzed by comparing the temperature profile of steam chamber and production dynamics. The experimental results indicate that the existence of breccia interlayer causes a thinner steam chamber profile and longer time to reach the peak oil rate. And, the ultimate oil recovery reduced 15.8% due to much oil stuck in breccia interlayer areas. The numerical simulation results show that a lower permeability in breccia layer area has a serious adverse impact on oil recovery if the thickness of breccia layer is larger, whereas the effect of permeability on SAGD performance is limited when the breccia layer is thinner. Besides, a thicker breccia layer can increase the time required to reach the peak oil rate, but has a little impact on the ultimate oil recovery.

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Numerical Investigation of Potential Injection Strategies To Reduce Shale Barrier Impacts on SAGD Process

Cited by 31 publications

References 11 publications

Bitumen Recovery Performance of SAGD and Butane- and Hexane-Aided SAGD in the Presence of Shale Barriers

Bitumen Recovery Performance of SAGD and Butane- and Hexane-Aided SAGD in the Presence of Shale Barriers

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Infilled Vertical Well LASER-Assisted SAGD

Breccia interlayer effects on steam-assisted gravity drainage performance: experimental and numerical study

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