hydrocarbon

The paper presents a case of applying classical reservoir engineering technique of material balance to one of the major carbonate reservoir in the western offshore basin in India that eventually led to establishment of more hydrocarbon volumes.

During Material Balance calculation, multiple runs were performed to match the pressure performance with a balance between the aquifer strength and hydrocarbon volume that was in agreement with geological understanding and performance of the field. The analysis indicated extra energy support that may be in the form of aquifer or higher in-place volumes. Following the in-house developed SIMEX (Simultaneous Exploration) approach a vertical well was identified for testing below assumed lowest known oil (LKO) limit.

The material balance study formed the basis for revisiting the geological understanding. The establishment of oil through the testing of well necessitated the revision of geological maps and re-estimation of hydrocarbon in-place volumes. Accordingly property maps have been prepared and volumes are revised. The revised volumes are about 14% more than the previous estimation. Similar approach was successfully applied to another reservoir in the Mumbai High field. Presence of more established oil will help in planning future strategies for field development.

Especially in fields where enough pressure production history is available, it is important to reassess the field's potential from time to time through simple and classical techniques available. Fields with multiple reservoirs have added advantage of developing the established hydrocarbons through zone transfer and in turn saving significant cost of drilling new well. This being a proven and classical technique, can be applied to other analogous reservoirs.

Considering the modern oil price environment, oil companies are more pressured than ever to reduce costs. This need affects tools used for reservoir characterization. Coring is important but expensive and is usually not available for the entire length of the well. A novel methodology is presented to perform reservoir characterization from wireline nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data, in the absence of any core, in offshore gas-bearing wells. This includes computing T₂ cutoff, hydrocarbon saturation, permeability, and poro-fluid sand facies determination.

NMR is a shallow measurement and using wireline NMR measurements is even more challenging due to higher time after bit and increased mud filtrate invasion. Consequently, its use is restricted to quantifying porosity, and even the basic assessment of bound/free fluid require correct T₂ cutoff to be determined from cores. Traditional formation evaluation methods use various equations like Archie’s, dual water, Waxman Smits, etc. to determine hydrocarbon saturation, all of which have many variables which, again, must be determined from cores. This makes it imperative to have core measurements to get precise results.

In this paper, we present the results of successful implementation of the proposed methodology, which functions without core data. It employs NMR data along with modern processing techniques like factor analysis and fluid substitution, and integrates density data to evaluate reservoir by 1) minimizing the mud signal, 2) using the virgin zone data to extract dominant peaks and repeated patterns on T₂ distribution to divide the entire reservoir section into different poro-fluid types, 3) obtaining the T₂ cutoffs for various poro-fluids facies, 4) calculating density magnetic resonance porosity (DMRP) and adopting it to drive fluid substitution, 5) obtaining original water equivalent porosity which is divided by DMRP to get water saturation, 6) employing the fluid substituted (water-only equivalent) T₂ distribution along with the T₂ cutoff determined by factor analysis to calculate permeability using the Timur-Coates equation.

Identification of a prospect is normally done based on seismic interpretation and geological understanding of the area. However, due to the inherent uncertainties of the data we still observe in many cases that all key petroleum system elements are present, but still the drilled prospect is dry. Such failures are mostly attributed to a lack of understanding of seal capacity, reservoir heterogeneity, source rock presence and maturation, hydrocarbon migration, and relative timing of these processes. The workflow described in this paper aims to improve discovery success rates by deploying a more rigorous and structured approach. It is guided by the play-based exploration risk assessment process. The starting point is always that the process is guided by the the basic understanding of a mature kitchen should always be based on a regional scale petroleum systems model. However, while evaluating prospects, the migration and entrapment component of a prospect should always be investigated by means of a locally refined grid-based petroleum system model. The uniquepart of this approach is the construction of a high-resolution static model covering the prospects, which is built by using available well data, seismo-geological trends and attributes to capture reservoir potential. Additional inputs such as fault seal analysis also helps to understand prospect scale migration and associated geological risks. In the regional play and local prospect-scale petroleum system models, geological and geophysical inputs are utilized to create the uncertainty distribution for each input parameter which is required for assessing the success case volume of identified prospects. The evaluated risk is combined with the volumetric uncertainty in a probabilistic way to derive the risked volumetrics. It is further translated into an economic evaluation of the prospect by integrating inputs like estimated production profiles, appropriate fiscal models, HC price decks, etc. This enables the economic viability of the prospects to be assessed, resulting in a portfolio with proper ranking to build a decision-tree leading to execution and operations in ensuing drilling campaigns.

Produced water is an inextricable part of the hydrocarbon recovery processes. Safe and environmentally benign disposal of produced water is a major concern for all the oil fields across the world in the present low cost and stringent environmental & statutory compliance era. Many technology available in the market to treat produced water oil contaminants but economical treatment of heavy metal content is still a great challenges for oil industries for safe disposal.

Therefore, New innovative technology i.e. Reed bed technology has been adopted in Heglig field of Sudan to treat the produced water and heavy metal economically through phytoremediation. After successful implementation in Heglig oil field, it is being implemented in other surrounding oil field also.

It is probably a world largest Phytoremediation/Bio-remediation system using Reed Bed technology operating successfully for last 15 years. It is environmental friendly, solar energy driven clean up techniques. This paper not only elucidate, how reed bed removes oil contaminants and heavy metals but also provide clear picture of how this project provide shelter for flora, fauna, other species that help to maintain ecological and environmental balance. Research has also demonstrated that reed-bed technology is feasible and resilient in treating oil produced water

This paper presents a multidomain integrated workflow that combines geophysics, borehole geology, fracture modeling, and petroleum systems analysis for characterization and resource assessment of basement plays. A 3D fracture model is developed by integrating image log interpretation and seismic data to assess the reservoir potential of fractured basement. The 3D fracture modeling is done using the discrete fracture network (DFN) approach with image log interpretation and other fracture drivers serving as the main input. The DFN is upscaled to generate fracture porosity and fracture permeability properties in a 3D grid. The upscaled fracture porosity is used to estimate the petroleum initially in place (PIIP) for the prospects. Multiple 2D petroleum system modeling is performed where large fault throws are identified from seismic interpretation. The petroleum system study helps in identification of areas with most prolific hydrocarbon generation and expulsion centers, which, coupled with the cross-fault juxtapositions, are the main locales of charging for basement reservoir. Further analysis of all the elements of basement play (i.e., source, reservoir, seal, trap, and migration) is done, and prospective areas within the basement play are delineated with high geological chance of success.

The identification of fluid saturations in depleted reservoir sands is critical to understand the reservoir potential and field life. However, in case of water flooding, the formation water salinity of the reservoirs sands might be altered and fluid saturations from conventional petrophysical analysis can be misleading. This will have direct impact on the field economics. A salinity independent saturation computation from Carbon/Oxygen (C/O) log becomes a necessity in such development wells– a first of such application in a field under secondary recovery for this basin.

C/O well logging has been extensively used in cased hole environments to determine saturation behind casing. They are used essentially to determine oil saturation in cased hole conditions for depleted reservoirs. While their cased hole applications have been well established; for the study well, a pulsed neutron tool was used in an open hole environment to determine the fluid saturations to compare against the saturations computed from conventional resistivity logs. This study helped in the determination of fluid saturations in mixed salinity reservoir sands, which were to be explored from subsequent wells in the field.

The hydrocarbon-bearing sands in the field were water injected in nearby wells to enhance recovery. Development wells drilled in the field relied on petrophysical evaluation from conventional open hole data and pressure testing and fluid sampling depths were determined accordingly. A pulsed neutron tool was deployed in an open hole well after operational constraints were encountered with the formation testing tool. As an alternative, the pulsed neutron data were acquired in the well to compute salinity independent water saturation based on C/O log response as against the fluid saturation computation from resistivity logs. The determination of fluid saturations from C/O helped in determination of altered salinity for the sand intervals in the field. For the study well, C/O-derived water saturation was found to be higher than that from resistivity log computation. This was significant in identification of water breakthrough in the bottom interval of the reservoir sands.

This paper details the method and findings of C/O logging in open hole environment from Western Onland Basin in India. The critical solutions provided for the reservoir sands in the field and enabled the operator to save significant well cost and rig time by making informed decision of not lowering the casing in this well section.

Hydrocarbons are trapped at great depths with pressure and temperature higher than surface conditions which would vary depending on reservoir properties. When the well is set on production, these hydrocarbons travel through the wellbore over reducing geothermal and formation pressure gradients. Hence, at shallower depths the temperature drops below the cloud point and sometimes, below pour point of crude thus creating an ambient temperature for the formation of wax and deposition of paraffin on the inner side of production tubing.

It has been observed that when hot fluid passes through a pipe which is covered by a continuously circulating hot water bath, the temperature difference of the fluid at surface outlet and sub-surface reservoir is reduced to a minimal value. This paper therefore proposes a practical application of such heat transfer within a wellbore for passively solving major industrial issues of paraffin depositions. The idea lies in minimizing the heat losses, which can be effectively done by insulating the inner side of the casing so that the annulus and fluid flowing within the tubing is isolated from exterior losses. According to the First law of Thermodynamics the fluid flowing within the tubing will experience reduction in thermal gradient. These loses can be compensated by injecting hotter brine through a pipe at the bottom of the annulus, which is isolated, using production packer. Further, circulating hot fluid in the annulus would result in isothermal heating of the fluid flowing through the tube which would minimize the heat loss across tubing, causing an increase in temperature of fluid at the surface above pour point. Several researchers have put forth heat transfer equations across the tubing's, annulus, insulator, casing, cement and the formation which can be used to calculate the overall heat transfer coefficient and thus, the amount of heat losses. Quartz sensors placed at the bottom of a wellbore would detect bottom borehole temperature based on which the injection temperature of fluid can be manipulated. The entire process can be automated by applying an artificial intelligent system which would monitor, control and respond. This method would increase the capex but would decrease the operating cost thus leading to an increase in the life of the well.

Panna Formation is a very critical and challenging formation deposited during Paleocene time of geological past in various parts of Western Offshore Basin of India. It was deposited in a fluvio-deltaic environment, sometimes even in a restricted marine set-up. Such variation in depositional setting caused mineralogical complexity, which in-turn imposed a limitation in conventional approach of formation evaluation and saturation determination to identify the pay zones with confidence. A comprehensive approach of integrated formation evaluation for rock quality characterization was attempted using a combination of new generation elemental and acoustic analysis for delineating the potential hydrocarbon bearing zones independent of conventional resistivity-based approach along with a better insight on formation heterogeneity. The studied well was drilled up to Panna Formation and conventional open-hole logs were acquired while drilling. However, due to complex mineralogical nature of the formation, estimation of key critical reservoir parameters was very challenging and imposed higher uncertainties in the results. An alternate approach was adopted using a few advanced log measurements to address this challenge. A combination of new generation elemental and acoustic data has been recorded in a single wireline run after acquiring conventional basic logs while drilling. An accurate porosity was derived by eliminating various mineralogical assemblages along with estimation of a geochemical permeability based on detailed elemental analysis. Measured aluminum from neutron inelastic capture spectrum method enabled to estimate clay volumes with accuracy, which provided the required insight for better effective porosity in such shaly-sand environment. Based on this improved porosity and permeability, an approach for rock-quality indexing was used for reservoir delineation.

Moreover, a good amount of organic carbon was found associated with clays caused shales with higher resistivity. Based on elemental measurements an interesting insight was possible to extract for resistivity independent fluid saturation. An additional pay zone with hydrocarbon saturation based on such resistivity independent approach was possible to identify, which was masked by conventional resistivity-based interpretation. Acoustic analysis results assisted in delineating the zones with possible open fractures to avoid any possibility for unwanted fluid breakthrough.

Based on this approach of alternate integrated petrophysical analysis perforation zones were selected including an additional zone, which was masked based on conventional analysis. The well was started producing around 1,05,000 m3 gas with around 200 barrels of oil per day. This study showcased an alternate and efficient characterization approach for any such mineralogically challenging clastic formations.

In this work, we present the development of a comprehensive mathematical formulation and reservoir simulator for thermal-hydraulic-mechanical simulation of CO₂-EOR processes

We adopt the integral finite difference method to simulate coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical processes during CO2-EOR in conventional and unconventional reservoirs. In our method, the governing equations of the multiphysical processes are solved fully coupled on the same unstructured grid. A multiscale algebraic linear solver is adopted to speed up the non-isothermal flow calculation. Inspired by the meshless method, the algebraic solver eliminates the low-frequency terms through smoothing on a coarse grid. In order to simulate the phase behavior of a three-phase system, a three-phase flash calculation module, based on direct minimization of Gibbs energy, is implemented in the simulator.

We have investigated the impact of cold CO₂ injection on injectivity as well as on phase behavior. We conclude that cold injection is an effective way to increase injectivity in tight-oil reservoirs. We have observed and studied the temperature decreasing phenomena near the production well, known as the Joule-Thomson effect, induced by expansion of in-situ fluids.

The novelty of this work lies in the fully coupled simulation scheme, including non-isothermal effects on CO2-EOR processes and recoveries, which has been ignored in almost all modeling studies of CO2-EOR. The multiscale solution strategy and the unique phenomena of non-isothermal compositional modeling coupled with geomechanics are captured by our simulator.

The variety and sophistication of upstream technologies have been growing fast for imaging the subsurface, modeling reservoir performance and monitoring oil and gas production. Yet there remains a fundamental need to thoroughly sample and analyze the produced reservoir fluids. Reservoir fluid analysis is critical for understanding the nature of produced hydrocarbons and is the key for production optimization. To gain the maximum value from this analysis, reservoir fluid sampling programs need to be well designed and integrated into well testing and reservoir surveillance programs, and not to be developed after. In one of Chevron's deep-water Gulf of Mexico (DWGOM) sub-salt fields, a robust geochemical sampling plan and production monitoring program has been in place since initial production to estimate the zonal contribution from individually stacked reservoirs. This surveillance work has been ongoing for 9 commingled wells over a period of 10 years.