A Current Look at Thermal Recovery

Abstract

This paper was prepared for the 40th Annual California Regional Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in San Francisco, Calif., Nov. 6–7, 1969. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines. Abstract Modern interest in thermal recovery began in the early 1950's with discovery of the insitu combustion process. By the end of the 50's, the first commercial installations of insitu combustion had been made and are still operating today. But there are only a handful of commercial insitu combustion operations, most of which are located in California. In the early 1960's, the main interest in thermal recovery shifted to cyclic steam injection and production of oil. Where applicable the cyclic process has been very successful and many California operators feel they have fully-developed their cyclic steam injection potential. Currently, interest appears to be shifting toward operations involving continuous injection coupled with cyclic steam injection stimulation of producing wells. Cyclic steam injection is one important factor credited with arresting declining oil production rate in California. Economically successful thermal oil recovery operations of all three major types: insitu combustion, continuous steam injection, and cyclic steam injection, are or have been conducted in many portions of the world. Introduction The start of modern interest in thermal recovery dates from publications on insitu combustion in the early 1950's. It was evident from the beginning that there were a large variety of ways to introduce heat into an oil reservoir. Many publications and patents concerning hot fluid injection and patents concerning hot fluid injection and variations on insitu combustion appeared throughout the 1950's. By the end of the decade, the important features of continuous drive thermal methods such as combustion, steam, and hot water injection were thoroughly documented in the literature. In regard to field operations, a number of pilot tests of insitu combustion had been conducted and described, but very little was known regarding field results of hot fluid injection. It was evident that insitu combustion was not economically feasible in all heavy oil reservoirs, and thus a growing interest in hot fluid injection was appearing.