Abstract
Steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) made great success in develo** super-heavy oil or oil sands projects. However, steam chamber growth and the performance may be impaired when shale laminae with high frequency exist. In order to enhance oil production and decrease steam to oil ratio (SOR), this paper presents feasibility study of vertical slim-holes to develop oil sands SAGD project by overcoming shale laminae.
Based on the monitoring data and production data, the influence of shale laminae on steam chamber expansion and production characteristics is analyzed. Similar to multilateral wells, vertical slimeholes about 25 cm in diameter can be drilled or created through shale laminae by high pressure water jetting near the horizontal section of the well pair. Theoretically, it is promising for vertical slimeholes to overcome the shale laminae between injection and production wells or above steam injection wells, and then enhance the rate of steam chamber growth and emulsion drainage. Furthermore, it is more helpful than multilateral wells to prevent the risk of early steam channeling. Based on this idea, a refined heterogeneous model incorporating staggered shale laminae was constructed, and a series of numerical simulations were conducted to evaluate the performance of vertical slim-holes assisted SAGD process, considering different configurations of the distance of vertical slim-holes from dual-horizontal wells and the spacing of vertical slim-holes along the horizontal sections. The simulation results show that the performance can be improved after 2 yrs and 3 yrs SAGD conversion under the conditions of 4-m and 8-m distance from dual-horizontal well and 25 m spacing along the horizontal section, corresponding to steam chamber spreading to vertical slim-holes. Although the vertical steam chamber growth in the early stage is not accelerated, it achieves significant oil enhancement with slight increase of steam injection. The proposed technology can be effectively applied to relatively low quality oil sands projects with shale laminae or interlayer.
Copyright 2022, IFEDC Organizing Committee.
This paper was prepared for presentation at the 2022 International Field Exploration and Development Conference in **’an, China, 16–18 November 2022.
This paper was selected for presentation by the IFEDC Committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper, as presented, have not been reviewed by the IFEDC Technical Team and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the IFEDC Technical Committee its members. Papers presented at the Conference are subject to publication review by Professional Team of IFEDC Technical Committee. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper for commercial purposes without the written consent of IFEDC Organizing Committee is prohibited. Permission to reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of IFEDC. Contact email: paper@ifedc.org.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the financial support by the “13th Five-Year” National Science and Technology Major Project (2016ZX05031-002). We also want to thank CNPC for allowing publishing this paper.
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Liang, Gy., **e, Q., Liu, Sq., Liu, Y., Zhou, Jn., Bao, Y. (2023). Feasibility Evaluation of Vertical Slim-Holes to Overcome Shale Laminae in Oil Sands SAGD Projects. In: Lin, J. (eds) Proceedings of the International Field Exploration and Development Conference 2022. IFEDC 2022. Springer Series in Geomechanics and Geoengineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1964-2_376
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