A&A Consulting Team's Extensive Experience Working on In Situ Combustion (ISC) and other Thermal EOR (TEOR) Projects
Extensive simulation study for a novel in situ combustion (ISC) process, for a company in Australia:
This novel ISC project consisted of 2 horizontal wells with moving air injection into upper multi-tubing horizontal well and producing oil from the lower horizontal well. The challenges of the process involved adaptation of the existing CMG software (STARS) to model non-typical and very complicated air injection scheme with moving injection perforations in multi-tubing configuration. Optimization of the process considered interrelation of parameters, such as length of perforations, time and period of injection, speed of moving injection perforations, well temperature, air injection rate, extent and movement of the combustion front, horizontal wells spacing, and spacing of horizontal wells pairs. The simulation also performed parameter sensitivity study to different geological formations, size of pay zone, and different types of the reservoir oil. The effect of addition of water to the injection was also included. One part of the study involved examination of the effect of different thermal and cracking reactions available in the literature. The simulation study proved that the novel combustion EOR process would be feasible.
The second part of this project put the feasibility question to utilizing only one horizontal well for both air injection and oil production. All above mentioned process challenges were raised to much higher level. The process was deemed feasible assuming overcoming of technical problems of operating multi-tubing system with moving injection and production perforations, multiple plugs and orifices.
Simulation study of Thermal Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI) EOR, as part of a multidisciplinary THAI project evaluation:
This reservoir simulation study was part of an extensive evaluation of a THAI EOR project, which included study of suitable reservoir types, operational design, and available technology. The study concentrated on comparison of oil recovery from different vertical and horizontal well configurations and the effects of different ways of combustion startup.
Other thermal EOR (TEOR) simulation studies:
Other TEOR simulation studies conducted have included investigation of Huff and Puff, SAGD, Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS), Steam Additives, effect of aquifers, and combination of some of these processes.
Comments:
Each simulation study deals with different variety of reservoir conditions, oil types, availability of reservoir data (very important), and operator experience.
With A&A Consulting Team’s extensive experience in conducting simulation studies of a wide variety of thermal EOR (TEOR) projects, A&A is ready to work on most challenging TEOR projects, for its clients, around the world.
