Sensitivity Analysis to Investigate Possibility of Steam Injection in an Iranian Carbonate Heavy Oil Field
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abstract
Steam injection in naturally fractured heavy oil reservoirs provides an extremely challenging problem as well as a potentially effective and efficient improved oil recovery method. Coupling of the two distinct and contrasting matrix and fracture systems results in a highly non-linear problem, and it gets even more complicated as a result of steep changes in fluid properties due to the thermal effects of steam injection. Modeling and designing an optimum steam injection operation in such systems requires an accurate characterization and representation of a naturally fractured heavy oil reservoir and steam injection operation parameters and dynamics. Kuh-e-Mond is one of Iranian Fractured heavy oil fields. This field is not developed yet. The API of oil in this field is very low (7.24 API) and the viscosity is very high (1758 cp) so thermal recovery methods are concerned for this case to reduce the viscosity. A thermal dual-porosity model is developed for a sector of this field and some sensitive analysis tests were performed. A comprehensive study is conducted in order to understand the relative effects of naturally fractured heavy oil system and injection operation properties on the oil recovery performance. The initial pressure in this field is low (927 psi), so pressure maintenance has been considered as a dominant factors in this study; simulation was undertaken using STARS software. This work shows that steam injection could improve oil recovery from zero up to 17% so this scenario can be a good applicant for this field. Results indicate the importance of grid block size, injection rates, temperature and quality of injections on the simulation process. This should help us better understand design optimum recovery operation, pressure maintenance and determine range of confidence for an oil recovery operation in this heavy oil field using steam injection.
name of conference
IOR 2009 - 15th European Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery
