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Fourth EAGE WIPIC Workshop
- Conference date: March 21-23, 2022
- Location: Online
- Published: 21 March 2022
26 results
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Novel Surfactant Formulations Tailored for Enhanced Oil Recovery Purposes: Physicochemical Properties at Various Salinity Levels
Authors O. Massarweh and A. AbushaikhaSummarySurfactants are amphiphilic compounds that have distinctive characteristics making them suitable to be utilized in the process of enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Surfactants are commonly used in EOR from fractured carbonate formations as they provide advantages such as interfacial tension (IFT) reduction and mobility control. Before applying to core-flood experiments, surfactant formulations need to be optimized according to reservoir conditions (i.e., temperature, salinity and rock type) to predict their possible effects on oil recovery. In this paper, we present an experimental procedure to select and design surfactant formulations as potential candidates for EOR application in carbonate formations. The surfactants used in this study are a group of Alfoterra surfactants, SDS, CTAB, DTAB and Triton X-100. The procedure followed in this study can be applied to various surfactants, reservoir conditions and rock types. It can also be extended to include other physicochemical properties that may affect the performance of surfactants in hydrocarbon reservoirs.
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The Effects of Capillary Pressure on Waterflooding Scenarios using Advanced Reservoir Simulator
Authors A. Mohamed, L. Li and A. AbushaikhaSummaryUnderstanding the mechanisms behind the production of oil and gas is essential to any project. One of these main topics is capillary pressure and its affects. Capillary pressure can range in many ways, resulting in a water-wet, oil-wet, or mixed-wet properties. This paper discusses the effects of an oil-wet, water-wet reservoir to one with no capillarity. The inputs are ran on a black oil model with specific properties using the QASR simulator to model enhanced oil recovery schemes in carbonate reservoirs. Upon interpretation of the results, improvements on the development strategy can be made to find the most efficient strategy on production.
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Experimental and Simulation Study of Steady-State Water Injection in Homogeneous Low-Permeability Rock
Authors O. Massarweh, L. Li and A. AbushaikhaSummaryContinuous improvement of the performance of reservoir simulators is needed to accurately capture and predict fluid flow in complex hydrocarbon reservoirs. This need intensifies as several enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques are continuously improved and developed to induce new effects on fluid displacement in the reservoir. In this study, an experimental and simulation verification of a water flooding process was reported. The study involved two cases performed at different flow conditions. An in-house built simulator was used to model the flooding process. The results showed that the model could accurately predict the performance of the flooding process for the two cases. Such results indicate both the robustness of experimental methodology as well as the simulation capabilities of the simulator.
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Block preconditioning for mixed hybrid finite element models of two-phase flow in reservoir simulations
Authors S. Nardean, M. Ferronato and A. AbushaikhaSummaryAlthough two-phase flow modeling in porous media is a typical application in the energy sector, new challenges continue to emerge in the numerical efficiency of the overall solving algorithm. Addressing the nonlinear set of governing equations in a fully implicit fashion leads to repeatedly solving a series of large-size systems of equations during a simulation, possibly at a high computational cost. The key to decreasing the iterative linear solver’s computational overhead is to provide an efficient preconditioning technique. In this work, we propose a block preconditioner specifically designed to fully exploit the 3x3 block structure of the linearized systems of equations arising from a mixed hybrid finite element discretization of Darcy’s equation. In particular, the block preconditioner takes advantage of the nearly diagonal structure of the block in position (1,1). Numerical results on realistic examples show the robustness and computational efficiency of the proposed approach.
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Multi-Dimension Reservoir Scale Interpretation Techniques to Understand the Reservoir Dynamics Of A Mature Carbonates Field
Authors L. Pontarelli, M. Viandante, D. Salim, N. Al-Kuwari and M. HadjSummaryThis case study highlights the necessity of multi-dimension reservoir scale interpretation techniques in order to understand the Reservoir Dynamics of a Mature Carbonate field.
An innovative LWD acquisition solution based on multi-dimensional reservoir mapping service was deployed in an already drilled injector allowed to recognize and characterize fault/fracture areas that represent conductive corridors impacting the efficiency of waterflooding systems (producer-injector pairs).
The Resistivity Volumes imagined by the 3D Reservoir Mapping Service allowed to:
- Identify the presence of highly conductive fault area
- Establish the presence of preferential paths of communication within different layer of the reservoir
- Determine the water invasion profile and direction
- Define zones of high water cut, associated to conductive corridors for workover intervention
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Supervised deep learning-based models for HM and forecasting of Water flooding and Enhanced Oil Recovery Scenarios
More LessSummaryAdvances in new technologies particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have now made it possible to use AI and ML-based approaches to build reservoir analytics models. These new methods have the capabilities to improve speed, efficiency and potential to eventually replace numerical reservoir simulators. The advantages of AI and ML-based simulators is significant time and cost savings.
AI and ML-based deep learning approach involve using subsurface reservoir static, dynamic, and well production data to form a fully independent deep learning-based reservoir simulator with capabilities to perform history matching and forecasting. The objective of this work is to use deep learning algorithms for performing history matching and forecasting on a series of industrial datasets, for waterflood and water alternating gas (WAG) scenarios.
The results show that deep learning based models are very good and give close to 85% accuracy in history matching. Three 3 different datasets are evaluated using deep learning achieving high accuracy. The models are extended to generate long-term forecasts and are optimized through optimization of hyperparameters. The work presented in this paper will demonstrate that AI and ML-based models have the potential to replace the conventional reservoir simulation workflow if an exhaustive data set is available.
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Influence of rock type and initial oil saturation on wettability during waterflooding of carbonate rocks.
More LessSummaryThis paper deals with the influence of wettability on carbonate rocks waterflooding. We present an experimental study performed on two carbonate rocks of almost the same mineralogy but presenting unimodal and bimodal pore size distribution. The steady state method was used to establish different levels of oil saturation in the cores before an ageing period in presence of crude oil to change the core wettabilty. We show that the responses to wettability alteration for the same oil/brine system depends strongly on the rock type. The change of wettability, from water wet to oil wet occurs when initial oil saturation exceed a given value that depends of the considered limestone. This behavior is attributed to the destabilization of water films that depends on the rock surface roughness.
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Applying Carbon Tax Within CO2 Utilisation Networks in Qatar
Authors R. Sawaly, A. Mohamed, R. Govindan, A. Abushaikha and T. AlansariSummarySignificant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2 emissions from industry, are essential to prevent climate change. Carbon pricing is a low-cost and effective tool to encourage carbon reduction. Although this domain of research has received widespread attention in literature, however, the studies available have not considered the application of carbon tax to support the CO2 utilization in industrial parks. Therefore, this study focused on developing a resource trade scheme for CO2 integration and utilization with implementing carbon tax. As such, a simple CO2 utilisation model is proposed; where carbon taxes are applied to the source if a specific amount of their emissions was not captured, or the sinks if they flared the allocated emissions from the source. The economic effect of a carbon tax varies significantly depending on how the generated tax revenues are used. When considering a vendors perspective, the profit decreases when paying a carbon tax since the process expenses increases. However, carbon taxes can increase the government’s revenues, which as a result has a positive impact on the economy.
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Depletion Management of Water Drive Naturally Fractured Carbonate Gas Reservoir
Authors R. Abdollahi, S.M. Motahhri, M. Nadri Pari, E. Fallahzadeh and C. HaoSummaryGas resources play a vital role in nowadays energy supply. It is providing 24 percent of all energy used in our diverse energy portfolio and it is important to recover as much gas as possible.
Water rising through fracture networks is one of main issues in naturally fractured gas reservoirs that causes gas trapping in matrix blocks and water production and subsequent recovery reduction. From Economic point of view it imposes high operating expenses, environmental risks, and productivity reduction.
Although numerical simulations can address relatively complex water rising problem, they usually are time consuming, and encounter difficulties in computational efficiency. A fast and appropriate decision making method is required to provide an immediate action to manage reservoir depletion where water rising is a serious challenge. This study introduces a fast approach to investigate the efficiency of common production strategies for managing depletion of naturally fractured carbonate reservoir when it has water rising issue through fracture networks.
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Investigation of Productivity Indices in Natural Gas Reservoir Using an Advanced Reservoir Simulator
Authors M. Al-Sada and A. AbushaikhaSummaryDue to the great effectiveness of the newly developed reservoir simulation software, they are currently playing a very important role in the industry all around the world to help extract the hydrocarbon reservoirs which represent more than half of the world’s proven reserves. There is no doubt that the cost of these software is high. Hence, it is crucial to examine the efficiency and the performance of the newly developed reservoir simulation software. The idea of this research is to validate an advanced reservoir simulator called QASR by finding the productivity index and then comparing it with what we know from the literature review conducted in this field. Additionally, investigate how some reservoir properties can influence the calculated value of the productivity index. These properties include the skin, bottom hole pressure, permeability, and well length.
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Benchmarking an Advanced Reservoir Simulator
Authors S. Shareef and A. AbushaikhaSummaryReservoir simulation proved its significance in the petroleum industry to solve reservoir engineering problems and predict reservoir future performance. The aim of this work is to verify a new academic reservoir simulation software called QASR simulation software by comparing its result with a legacy reservoir simulation software’s result to ensure its reliability using dead oil and black oil model cases for an oil reservoir. The method is to run the two model cases for both simulators for four oil producer wells and one water injector well considering the same parameters such as initial pressure and density. The results of the study show a match in the performance of the oil reservoir properties behavior of the four oil producers and water injector for both QASR and legacy simulation software interpretations. The conclusion of this work suggests that QASR software generates the same results as obtained from the legacy reservoir simulator. Hence, QASR simulation is reliable and provides representative results.
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Joining the billion cell club: Modelling of giant oil and gas fields using advanced simulation methods
Authors L. Li and A.S. AbushaikhaSummaryHere, we present the success of developing an advanced numerical reservoir simulator that is capable of modelling and simulation giant oil and gas fields. We also report the results of modelling and simulation a one billion cell black oil model using 4600 CPUs based on 115 nodes.
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Numerical Simulation of CO2 sequestration into depleted natural gas reservoirs of Qatar
Authors M. Al-khuzaei and A. AbushaikhaSummaryConsidering that fossil fuels emit huge amount of carbon dioxide and contribute to climate change and global warming, countries have taken serious steps moving toward clean energies. Qatar, world’s largest supplier of natural gas, have committed to reduce its carbon emissions as part of its fulfillment of 2015 Paris agreement of climate neutral society. One of the ways that the country will most likely transition toward clean energy is through CO2 sequestration into gas reservoirs while producing blue hydrogen. Given its significance of reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere, researchers performed several studies in relation to carbon capture and storage technologies, and impact on gas condensate reservoirs. However, little attention was given to the simulation modelling. Therefore, the objective of this research is to model CO2 sequestration into gas reservoirs in Qatar using QASR numerical simulation tool. Additionally, create a framework that integrates the impact of CO2 sequestration on the rock formation, environment, and economics.
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4D Seismic Feasibility in Complex Upper Cretaceous Carbonate Reservoir, Abu Dhabi, UAE
More LessSummary4D seismic reservoir surveillance technique has been always challenging in carbonate reservoirs due to weak signal but favorable for the oil-producing complex and fractured Upper carbonate reservoir in a mature oil field in Abu Dhabi whose development is becoming a challenge because of higher-pressure depletion and increasing water cut. 4D seismic feasibility study, carried out with the objective of identifying pressure depletion and the bypass oil zones, resulted into feasibility of the reservoir monitoring technique subjected to the duration of production interval. 4D seismic amplitude attribute, “Envelope(monitor)-Envelope(base)” and “time-shift” are found above the repeatability noise (∼10%) and detectability limit of 0.149ms respectively over a period of 14 years of production and 9 years of production/water injection period. While technique is not feasible over 2 years of Pilot Water Injection period because of poor 4D signal to be detectable. Since 4D signals are dominantly controlled by accelerability law taken from the worldwide analogue hence a pilot 4D monitor survey is recommended for the calibration of pressure law and hence to consolidate the concept before implementing it on full field scale for optimizing the infill producers as well as water injectors.
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Thermodynamic assessment of an integrated system for enhanced oil recovery.
Authors A. Banu, A. Mohamed, A. Abushaikha and Y. BicerSummaryThis research proposes a novel hybrid system for clean methane conversion for liquified hydrogen production. The integration of this process with enhanced oil recovery was evaluated. The thermodynamic data were obtained by modelling the system on Aspen Plus, and the final CO2 flow rates from the system were determined. The CO2 obtained was injected for EOR in a reservoir simulator. A detailed thermodynamic assessment was performed for the system by performing the mass, energy, entropy, and exergy balances over each unit. The efficiencies of the subsystems and overall system are reported.
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Modelling CO2 dissolution in brines for CO2 sequestration and enhanced oil recovery applications
Authors A.S. Abd, D. Voskov and A. AbushaikhaSummaryUnderstanding the thermodynamic behavior of each flowing phase in a petroleum reservoir allows for accurate quantification of these phases. This work explains how to develop and run a thermodynamic model to reliably forecast the equilibrium behavior of oil-gas-brine systems across a reasonable pressure and temperature range. The 3-phase negative flash method is tested against previously published data in the literature. The multiphase flash approach is used to develop linearized physical operators utilizing an Operator Based Linearization (OBL) modeling technique that allows for the nonlinear solution of governing equations to include various complicated physics. To our knowledge, this is the first implementation to the coupling of 3-phase flash calculations for hydrocarbons and brines have been using fugacity-activity models with a a sophisticated, high-efficiency linearization technique. Such coupling improves the efficiency and flexibility of physical phenomena modeling of the fluid flow in porous subsurface reservoirs.
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Autonomously Controlling the Conformance of Fluids Injection in Carbonate Reservoirs
Authors M. Moradi, S. Ibrahim Al Shemaili, A. Mohamed Fawzy, E. Assreti and M. El MaghrabySummaryAs reservoir production declines over time, the injection of fluids is required to enhance oil recovery and/or to maintain the reservoir pressure.
The common challenges associated with injection wells include loss of injectivity, premature injector failure, and fluid injection conformance. Many techniques have been applied to improve fluid conformance of injection wells to enhance the efficiency of water/polymer flooding and ultimately increase field oil recovery.
The newly developed autonomous, rate-limiting, outflow control device (AOCD) can mitigate the conformance issues for both fluid injection and/or acid stimulation operations in carbonate reservoirs. This paper shares the outcome of a field application of this technology in a water injection well in a carbonate reservoir in the Middle East. Also, it shows how the completion can be used for improving the performance of other fluid injection operations including polymer injection and acid stimulation.
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Well-Test-Logging in the Middle East, paving the way to low-cost dynamic reservoir characterization
By A. JACQUESSummaryA new injection-based logging technique is proposed in which the open hole is scanned with an interface between two fluids exhibiting a large viscosity contrast. This testing method, which combines constant pressure testing and logging techniques, delivers a low cost proxy of the formation permeabilities
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Water Injection Optimization in mature fields using low-cost techniques: North Sea field Case
Authors S. Banerjee and C. LINNETSummaryGorm is a complex water-flooded chalk reservoir located in the Danish sector of the North Sea. The field has undergone a series of depletion, gas injection and then followed by water injection. Water injection has been on the decline in the recent years due to depleting well stock and integrity issues. Hence it was imperative to optimize water injection using the existing well stock. Thus, SRT’s (Step Rate Tests) were conducted in all Gorm active water injection wells in 2018 and early 2019.
Performing SRT’s on all the Gorm injection wells allowed us to assess the current fracture pressure, safely enabling an update of the water injection targets resulting in better voidage by optimum pressure support.
Based on this campaign of SRTs on Gorm the WI potential with the current well stock has been increased by 11% thereby providing better pressure support to the reservoir without damaging the formation. Following the SRT campaign, the water injection in the Gorm field has plateaued with a small decrease in 2020 due to further depletion of injection well stock. Hopefully the success of the last campaign should trigger a new SRT campaign in Gorm in 2022.
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Observations of water-in-oil micro-dispersions as a displacement mechanism in secondary and tertiary low salinity waterflooding
Authors A. Selem, N. Agenet, M. Blunt and B. BijeljicSummaryLow salinity waterflooding (LSW) is considered one of the most efficient techniques to improve oil recovery; it is cost-effective and easily deployable in oil fields. The previous experimental work investigating LSW was performed mainly at the core scale and on micromodels where there are limitations to investigating the mechanisms responsible for the low salinity effect on a natural rock. In this experimental study, a key mechanism of low salinity waterflooding was investigated in both secondary and tertiary modes in carbonates at reservoir conditions. In situ development of water-in-oil micro-dispersions was observed. The development of water micro-dispersions was more prompt in secondary LSW due to the direct contact between oil and low salinity brine. Whereas in the tertiary experiment, the high salinity brine slowed down the formation of these micro-dispersions. The analyses showed that, in comparison with tertiary mode, LSW resulted in higher oil recovery in the secondary mode. The results highlight the differences between LSW modes by investigating the pore-scale displacement mechanisms and interfacial interactions between rock, crude oil, and high and low salinity brine and their impact on oil recovery.
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De-risking Polymer Injectivity in a Carbonate Reservoir to Unlock Incremental Oil Production
Authors C. Fabbri, H. Al Saadi, K. Wang, F. Maire, C. Romero, P. Cordelier, C. Prinet, S. Jouenne, O. Garnier, S. Xu, J.M. Leon, M. Baslaib and S. MasalmehSummaryThis abstract presents the updated results of a polymer injectivity test performed in a highly layered limestone reservoir in the Middle East. The field observations are then compared with model predictions. Considering the importance of injectivity for scaling-up the polymer flood and recent field observations, calibration of the model during a multi-well pilot is discussed.
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4D Seismic impact to support production optimization - Dan and Halfdan chalk examples, Danemark
Authors J. Zaske, N. Bedayse, K. Kostro, A. Singh, L. Vestergaard and B. WangSummaryTime lapse 4D seismic has proven to be a key tool to monitor water flood efficiency in the Danish Underground Consortium (DUC), especially for the mature Dan and Halfdan chalk fields. It is fully integrated within asset teams and used to identify and mature infill drilling and well- and reservoir management (WRM) opportunities.
4D signals clearly correlate with production and water injection effects along the long horizontal wells. This gives important insights about the lateral and vertical water sweep efficiency and areas with gas breaking out of solution due to insufficient pressure support from injectors.
This knowledge is used to constrain reservoir models for more complex development projects but also directly adds value in supporting specific well interventions, such as opening or closing of individual completion zones to drain remaining oil pockets and reduce water cut.
In this presentation we will share how 4D seismic is interpreted, integrated and impacts business decisions. We show a range of examples how 4D is used to identify swept zones and to locate remaining oil, compare drilling results with 4D predictions, and how it is used to identify and mature WRM and infill drilling opportunities to improve production performance
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Multidisciplinary integration leading to production optimization in mature waterflooded chalk fields, Denmark.
Authors T. Wang, A. Singh, M. Pallant, J. Zaske, N. Bedayse, M. Coste, D. Gelderblom, I. Andreeva and K. KostroSummaryTo optimise the production with an acceptable cost, a project known as WROM (Well and Reservoir Optimisation Management) has been initiated. A robust 2G&R (Geology, Geophysics and Reservoir Engineering) synthesis along with opportunity ranking system, which involve multidisciplinary contributions, were taken to assess a wide range of economic opportunities on Dan and Halfdan Fields and these opportunities will be tackled by different types of interventions. These interventions are anticipated to be executed between 2022 to 2024.
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Chasing Business Critical Insights in a Fast and Continuous Manner Using Ensemble-based Modeling Approach
Authors A.S. Khan, A. Phade and T.C. SandøSummaryThe work presented here introduces an uncertainty centric ensemble-based approach for reservoir modelling. The approach, as opposed to traditional step-wise siloed approach, promotes dialogue and collaboration between subsurface professionals to gain a better understanding of the uncertainty associated with the reservoir at each modelling step.
The proposed integrated and automated workflows are described which start by building an initial ensemble using all the known uncertainty in the available data. The initial ensemble is then history-matched using an ensemble-based algorithm that makes use of multiple machine-learning techniques. Subsequently, the history-matched ensemble is used to then perform forecasting for the reservoir under all the inherent uncertainty, enabling subsurface teams to truly analyse risks and opportunities associated with crucial business decisions.
The methodology is demonstrated on a carbonate reservoir and the resulting value gained is highlighted. The approach enables teams to perform reservoir modelling in a fraction of time, compared to traditional deterministic approach, and facilitates assimilation of field data as it becomes available, in a robust and seamless manner.
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Polymer Gel Systems for Wellbore Strengthening of Oil and Gas Wells
Authors A. Hamza, M. Shamlooh, I. Hussein, M. Nasser, M. Magzoub and S. SalehiSummaryWellbore strengthening has been recently introduced as a technique to prevent and treat lost circulation of the drilling fluids. This work overviews different polymeric formulations crosslinked with organic and in-organic crosslinkers as lost circulation materials (LCM) to seal fractures for wellbore strengthening applications. Functionalized silica showed a potential to replace the conventional use of polyethyleneimine (PEI). Moreover, nanosilica with various sizes can reinforce the developed gels and improve the stability of the formulations. On the other hand, environmentally friendly in-organic crosslinkers such as cobalt acetate and aluminum acetate were implemented for high and low-temperature applications as alternatives to the toxic chromium acetate.
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Interwell and inflow gas tracers – overview and applications
More LessSummaryGas chemical tracer technologies for inter-well and inflow applications are used to develop reservoir understanding as well as gas flow patterns. Inter-well gas tracers have been adapted to support WAG and CO2-WAG applications in the recent years and are proven a legitimate source of reservoir information. Inflow tracers increase granularity within a well and in collaboration with inter-well are able to provide information and solution on gas production and efficiency of EOR strategies.
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