Production Process and Operations - Enhanced oil recovery technologies

Production Process and Operations

1. Hydrocarbon Industry Overview
1. Resources- Reserves – Production
2. Conventional
3. Unconventional
4. Colombian Quick Overview
2. Upstream, Midstream and Down Stream
3. Exploration and Production Live Cycle
4. Exploration Process and Operations

5. Production Process and Operations
– Primary- Secondary and Tertiary Recovery
6. Enhanced Oil Recovery Technologies

Cycle of Oil Production Process

Exploration
Discovery

Abandon
Tertiary
Recovery
Secondary
Recovery

Exploration
and
Production
Cycle

Delimitation

Development

Primary
Recovery


Oil Production, BOPD

Cycle of Oil Production Process

Ternary
“Enhanced Oil“
Recovery

Secondary
Recovery

12 - 15 %
OOIP

Primary
Recovery

10 - 15 %
OOIP

5 - 25 %
OOIP

Time

Reserves

Primary recovery
Production reservoirs usually start such as natural production taking
advantages of gas or water drive reservoirs that gives a formation
pressure high enough to force crude oil into the well and sometimes
to the surface through the tubing.
However, many oil reservoirs enter production with a formation
pressure high enough to push the oil into the well but not up to the
surface through the tubing. In these cases, some means of “artificial
lift” must be installed.
•
•

Pumps at the bottom of the production tubing that is operated
by a motor.
Gas lift, uses gas bubbles to lower the density of the oil,
allowing the reservoir pressure to push it to the surface.

The means by which the initial production is achieved, in many cases, a secondary recovery
method, such as waterflood, is required to maintain an economical reservoir production rate.

Primary recovery: natural drive and artificial lift
The First and Most Important Step
Primary oil recovery is the first phase, which happens
once a well has been drilled from the surface to an
underground reserve. Gravity, along with the pressure
inside the reservoir, forces the oil into the wellbore.
From here, the oil is brought to the surface through
mechanical means, like a pump jack. The primary phase
of oil recovery continues until the pressure inside the
well is no longer enough to produce oil in quantities that
make it financially worthwhile.

Primary recovery: natural drive and artificial lift
Once an accumulation of oil has been found in a porous and
permeable reservoir, a series of wells are drilled in a
predetermined pattern to effectively drain this “oil pool”. Wells
may be drilled as close as one to each 10 aces (660 ft. between
wells) or as far apart as one to each 640 acres (1 mile between
wells) depending on the type of reservoir and the depth to the
“pay” horizon.
The rate of production is highest at the start when all of the
energy from the dissolved gas or water drive is still available. As
this energy is used up, production rates drop until it becomes
uneconomical to operate although significant amount of oil still
remains in the reservoir.


When Primary methods are Not Enough
Primary oil recovery is the first option to the oil-exploration industry. There are also secondary and tertiary
recovery methods. These methods make it possible to access another 20 - 30 percent of a reserve's crude supply.

Secondary recovery: injection of gas or water
Secondary recovery is based on the injection of fluids
for supplying extra energy into the reservoir and push
the oil to the production wells.

Gas

Oil

Secondary recovery is accomplished by injecting GAS
or WATER into the reservoir to replace produced fluids
and thus maintain or increase the reservoir pressure.

Connate water

When gas alone is injected, it is usually put into the
top of the reservoir, where petroleum gases normally
collect to form a gas cap.
When water is injected, it is pumped into the oil
reservoir from several sites around the field; (inset)
within the formation, the injected water forces oil
toward the production well.

Grains of sand

Secondary recovery: injection of gas or water
An even more widely practiced secondary recovery method is
Water injection “waterflooding”. After being treated to remove
any material that might interfere with its movement in the
reservoir, water is injected through some of the wells in an oil
field.
Water moves through the formation, pushing oil toward the
production wells.
Water injection is the most widely applied enhanced recovery
technique.
The source of water to be injected comes from:
• Water that is produced and separated from the oil in the
initial production phase.
• Water coming from external sources, like subsurface
aquifers or surface streams.

Secondary recovery: water injection

The waterflooding is a cheap process and also is a very efficient mechanism to produce oil in most of the
cases. These are some of the reasons to be worldwide used as the most common secondary recovery
process.
Nevertheless, the injection water helps to produce de mobile oil in the reservoirs pushing the oil toward to
the production wells. This is a dragging process that depends on oil-water viscosity ratio.
The mobility of the water and oil is controlled by the mobility ratio “M” among others variables, and help to
define the efficiency of the waterflooding process.

M = f (µo/µw)

M = (Kw/µw)/ (Ko/µo)

Injector

Instead of have a piston like
displacement, the differences
in viscosity allow the water to
find paths to the producer,
leaving and important amount
of oil behind the water front.
This phenomena is called
fingering, and reduces the
water injection efficiency.

Producer

Good sweep
process

Fingering Effects

Injector

Producer

Tertiary recovery
Tertiary recovery, involves all methods to maximize the oil recovery beyond the primary and secondary processes, this
is usually considered the last step in the life of a reservoir. It is commonly called Enhanced Oil Recovery - EOR.
Enhanced recovery techniques are used to:
1. Improve the sweep efficiency and
2. Mobilize the remaining oil.
There are three common approaches:
• Thermal recovery . Use of heat to make the oil flow more easily, and increase pressure forcing it to the surface.
• Steam injection into the formation.
• In-situ combustion – air injection
• Gas injection. Miscible - immiscible process. Use of gas to drive oil or lower its viscosity and increase flow.
• CO2, propane, methane or other gases.
• Chemical flooding. involves mixing dense to increase the water viscosity and improve the mobility ratio, and
also to reduce the interfacial tension (IFT), to remove some oil sticked in the reservoir rock.
• water-soluble polymers with water and,
• water-soluble Surfactant – Polymer solution

Ternary recovery

Secondary versus Tertiary Recovery

Enhanced Oil Recovery Technologies
Enhanced Oil Recovery – Thermal Process

In this process steam in injected into the
reservoir, the hot water front is formed
and the heat is transferred from the this
front to the reservoir fluids, increasing
the temperature of the fluids and
reducing the viscosity, hence improving
the mobility ratio.
There are two ways to inject steam:
• Cycling Steam Injection
• Continuous Steam Injection


The cycling process consist on injecting
steam in the producer well for some time
and then close the well to allow the heat
transfer, and finally open the well to
production again.

This process takes at least 4 to 6 cycles
and the it is necessary to move forward
to the continuous steam injection
process.


This is basically a thermodynamic
process, where air is injected and an
ignition is initiated to promote
combustion process using the reservoir
oil.
The Oil is splitted or cracked into small
molecules with lower viscosity and then
is more ease to move toward the
production wells.

Enhanced Oil Recovery Non – Thermal Process
This process concerns the injection of gas
into the oil zone. The injected gas along
with oil emerges shortly after taken.
There is miscible and immiscible injection
gas process.
In the miscible process, the gas goes into
the oil body reducing the viscosity in a
process called swelling.
The immiscible process allow the injected
gas to increase the reservoir pressure and
push the oil to the producer wells.

The Chemical flooding can be divided into
two process
• To improve the sweep efficiency.
• To reduce the Residual Oil Saturation.
For sweep efficiency, the most common
method is to inject water-soluble
polymers along with the water, to have a
denser fluid pushing the oil to the
production wells.
The process improves the oil recovery
because the front moves more like piston
displacement.

Once the polymer flooding push all the oil
to the producer well, into the reservoir
there are still an important amount of oil,
but it is basically non- mobile.
To allow this oil the be movable, is it
important to reduces de cohering forces,
reducing the interfacial tension (IFT),
between oil and water and allow the oil
to move.
To do this it is necessary to inject an
chemicals that reduce IFT, the most
common products used are the
Surfactants.


The application of Surfactants into the
reservoir has the
For sweep efficiency, the most common
method is to inject water-soluble
polymers along with the water, to have a
denser fluid pushing the oil to the
production wells.
The process improve the oil recovery
because the front moves more like piston
displacement.

In summary Chemical flooding can be divided into to groups:

Injection of Polymer

• Linear polymer
• Cross – linked polymer

Injection of Surfactants
• Surfactant – Polymer (SP)
• Alkali – Surfactant – Polymer (ASP)

Surfactants is produced primary by
saponification process, same as any
soap. That means that surfactants can
be produced by interaction of Alkalis
and organic acids.

When the oil contains important
amount of acid components, it is
possible to inject some Alkalis to allow
they to react and produce in-situ
surfactant.

Ususally the batches injected in the different chemical process are:

Tomado de “Oil Recovery Enhancements”, Course 2011, Mojdeh Delshad

SUMMARY
Han visualizado procesos afines a la ingeniería Química en los diferentes métodos de recobro de Petróleo?
El flujo de fluidos en un medio poroso es muy diferente al flujo por tuberías??
Que tipo de ecuaciones se utilizan para evaluar el flujo de fluidos?

SUMMARY
Han visualizado procesos afines a la ingeniería Química en los diferentes métodos de recobro de Petróleo?

Darcy´s Equation
Viscous forces

Capillary forces

SUMMARY

Son los procesos de EOR afines a la ingeniería química?
• Procesos de Cracking
• Transferencia de Energía
• Transferencia de masa
• Proceso de viscosificación - dilución

• Reacciones químicas (saponificación)

Fluid Flow in Porous Media

3
2
1
Sostener la producción de
campos actuales en más de 800
KBDE

Aumentar la producción
con nuevas reservas

Desarrollar HNC y continuar
estrategia de compras “de
oportunidad”

1,3 MBPED

1 MBPED

Hallazgos
30%
Potencial Factor de Recobro de campos actuales

23%
Factor de Recobro Proyectado 2013 Campos actuales

18%

Factor de Recobro actual


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Production Process and Operations - Enhanced oil recovery technologies

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