Oil recovery from naturally fractured reservoirs by steam injection methods

Technical Report · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1991

OSTI ID:6815143

Reis, J C; Miller, M A

The United States of America has naturally fractured reservoirs containing many tens of billions of barrels of oil. When secondary and enhanced recovery methods are applied, fractures tend to channel injected fluids through the reservoir to production wells, resulting in much of the oil in the matrix blocks being bypassed and not recovered. This results in a low recovery efficiency from fractured reservoirs. Oil recovery by steam injection is a proven, successful technology for non-fractured reservoirs, but has received only limited study for fractured reservoirs. Preliminary studies suggest recovery efficiencies in fractured reservoirs may be increased by as much as 50% with the application of steam relative to that of low temperature processes. The objectives of this research program are to quantify the amount of oil expelled by these recovery mechanisms and to develop a numerical model for predicting oil recovery in naturally fractured reservoirs during steam injection. The experimental study consists of constructing and operating two apparatuses to isolate each of these mechanisms. The first will measure the thermal expansion coefficient for the pore volume of various lithologies and the second will measure the maximum gas saturations that could build up within a matrix block. A third experimental task will be to measure oil expulsion from matrix blocks at low and high temperatures by capillary imbibition alone. Other experimental measurements will be conducted on thermal properties of porous media using existing equipment. The numerical study will consist of developing transfer functions for oil expulsion from matrix blocks to fractures at high temperatures and incorporating them, along with the energy equation, into a dual porosity reservoir simulator. This simulator will then be utilized to make predictions for steam injection processes in selected naturally-fractured reservoirs.

• Research Organization: Texas Univ., Austin, TX (United States). Dept. of Petroleum Engineering
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC22-90BC14661
• OSTI ID: 6815143
• Report Number(s): DOE/BC/14661-8; ON: DE93008781
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
020300* -- Petroleum-- Drilling & Production
ANALOG SYSTEMS
DATA
DOCUMENT TYPES
ENERGY SOURCES
ENHANCED RECOVERY
EXPANSION
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FLUID INJECTION
FORECASTING
FOSSIL FUELS
FRACTURED RESERVOIRS
FUELS
FUNCTIONAL MODELS
INFORMATION
MATERIALS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
NUMERICAL DATA
OIL SATURATION
PERMEABILITY
PETROLEUM
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
POROUS MATERIALS
PROGRESS REPORT
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
ROCKS
SANDSTONES
SATURATION
SEDIMENTARY ROCKS
SIMULATORS
STEAM INJECTION
THEORETICAL DATA
THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY
THERMAL EXPANSION
THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES
WATER SATURATION