Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Petroleum Engineering

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

Reservoir monitoring is a key factor in the management of oil and gas resources. With the recent developments of permanent downhole temperature monitoring tools such as Fiber-Optic Distributed Temperature Sensing (FO-DTS), temperature transient analysis has evolved as a new alternative for reservoir monitoring. In this work, different techniques of temperature data analysis are presented for monitoring and characterization of hydrocarbon and geologic carbon storage (GCS) reservoirs. The objective of this study is to present new approaches that enable monitoring injection profile through vertical and horizontal injection wells using temperature warmback analysis. Application of temperature warmback analysis is also extended for diagnosis of hydraulic fracture treatments in unconventional reservoirs. In the context of GCS, the applications of passive and active temperature monitoring to track CO2 migration through storage aquifers and improperly abandoned wells are presented.

To achieve the objectives of this study, novel analytical models are presented to describe the temperature evolution during and shortly after non-isothermal fluid injection operations. The analytical models are developed through solving heat and mass conservation equations in the reservoir after making relevant assumptions using different mathematical techniques. Inversion procedures are presented accordingly to enable estimating injection flow profile through injection wells using graphical techniques and regression analysis. The validity of the analytical solutions and the inversion techniques is demonstrated through validating the analytical results with those obtained from commercial simulation tools during forward and inverse modeling. Different scenarios are presented that cover the possible operating conditions, different injection well types, and different injection applications.

To monitor CO2 migration in storage aquifers, two approaches are presented using passive and active temperature monitoring. Passive temperature monitoring is implemented to track CO2 plume migration in the subsurface and CO2 migration to the surface via improperly abandoned wells. Active temperature monitoring is implemented through in-well and formation heat pulse testing at monitoring wells to track CO2 migration in a storage aquifer. New graphical interpretation techniques are presented for estimating individual phase velocity, CO2 saturation, subsurface thermal properties, and detecting CO2 arrival through analyzing the transient temperature signal obtained over the monitoring interval during the heat pulse testing.

Date

9-1-2022

Committee Chair

Zeidouni, Mehdi

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.5961

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