Assessment of Development Methods for a Heavy-Oil Sandstone Reservoir in Middle East: Part II: Numerical Evaluation of Thermal Recovery Methods in a Hetrogenos System

Abstract

AbstractA combination of growing energy demand, declining performance of conventional oil fields and attractive oil prices have renewed interests in both the heavy oil resources and the methods of exploiting them. However, their low mobility precludes relying on natural drive mechanisms for their extraction. Given that there are a very large number of EOR methods and to accelerate decision-making, a relatively simple screening procedure has been developed and implemented. Several simulation runs were conducted, investigating the effects of petrophysical properties and operating variables on performances of thermal and non-thermal flood processes. Then, a detailed economic analysis was performed to assess the economic feasibility of each recovery process/scenario. This work has contributed significantly toward our understanding of the mechanisms of thermal injection in high permeability heavy oil reservoir. This is critical in the decision on the applicability of thermal recovery methods and its field application success.