Simulation on Heavy Oil Production from Steam-Flooding

Abstract

Heavy-oil is one of the main energy sources in the future. However, with the high viscosity of heavy oil, steam-flooding (SF) is one of the major techniques to produce this oil. To determine a favorable operating condition, many recent studies have evaluated the different methods like varying the well spacing and steam injection rates. However, there is no single optimum value for all reservoirs or all modes of operation. In this study, it’s aimed to investigate the effects of well spacing, injection rate, and perforation on heavy oil production with low permeability in multi-layered heterogeneous reservoir. The practical field data was applied to simulate the SF process by using STARS, a CMG program. Production parameters such as injector – producer (inj. – prod.) distance from 141 m to 282 m and steam injection rates from 30 m3/d to 180 m3/d were evaluated to obtain the optimum conditions with 80 % steam quality. The entire project was considered for 20 years of production. From the results, it showed that the higher oil recovery can be achieved by increasing injection rate and/or shorten well spacing. In order to lower the steam consumption, the selective perforation in bottom layers was compared with full perforation strategy. With the balance between oil production and steam injection, about 60 % of steam can be saved in terms of water barrels (bbls). Meanwhile, it’s possible to achieve a longer project life due to the slow depletion rate.