New cold production technique for heavy oil with strong bottom water drive

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2011

Abstract

Few heavy oil reservoirs with strong bottom water drives have been developed successfully, because severe water coning causes low ultimate recovery, low well productivity, and high water production. In these reservoirs, thermal and gravity-assisted methods that could improve recovery are perceived economically unfavorable or technologically infeasible. In this paper, we propose a new cold production technique, called Bilateral Water Sink (BWS), to meet those challenges. The BWS method suppresses water cresting by producing oil and water simultaneously from bilateral horizontal wells completed in the oil and water zones separately. Unlike conventional horizontal well production, where water crest cause water to bypass oil, making the water drive mechanism ineffective; BWS prevents water cresting by altering the potential distribution in the near-well area. With cresting suppressed, the top lateral well's production stream is water-free, and water drives the oil from the edges of the well drainage area to the well, resulting in high ultimate recovery. By exploiting the natural reservoir energy of the bottom water drive, BWS becomes economically, technically, and environmentally appealing - especially for offshore where cold production is the only option and oil-water separation is a problem. In this paper, new analytical models are derived to design the water and oil rates for BWS and to quantify the BWS's effect of avoiding water cresting and improving oil recovery. The analytical models are verified with numerical simulations. The BWS technique is also theoretically demonstrated using data from actual oilfield. The results show a considerable increase of oil recovery from less than 15 percent for conventional horizontal well to over 40 percent for BWS well. Copyright 2011, Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Proceedings - SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition

First Page

3020

Last Page

3032

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