Abstract In this paper we are continuing our previous works (SPE-143142 and WHOC11-353) to investigate the best development options for a major heavy oil reservoir within the GCC region. In the early stage of this work the most applicable EOR methods were selected, and several simulation runs were conducted to find the optimal injection scenarios and rank them based on the oil recovery factor (ORF). In this paper a comparative study and a sensitivity analysis of various operational conditions and reservoir parameters were conducted in order to (1) find the optimum conditions to achieve a high RF and (2) understand the effect of reservoir heterogeneity on the reservoir performance. The investigated operational parameters are the Steam injection rate, injection swapping time and the perforation location. The investigated reservoir parameters are oil viscosity, initial water saturation, porosity and permeability. In addition to investigating these reservoir parameters, the oil price sensitivity was investigated to evaluate the financial feasibility of the selected recovery methods within a historical and forecasted oil price range.
The preliminary results show that the RF is very sensitive to the oil viscosity value and the relation between them is a nonlinear relation. The Simulation results also indicate that the increase in the porosity and permeability accelerates performance; however, the opposite is not true for the initial water saturation value. From an economic perspective, production acceleration would improve overall project economics by mitigating the negative impact of discounting on the revenue stream due to the low oil price. Economically, all successive scenarios support a successful investment at the lowest (expected) oil price; in contrast, the continuous steam and hot-water flooding development options show a high economic risk after the second year, at all oil price scenarios.