10 operations take thermal to the next level

There's lots of talk in the industry about edgy thermal technology. Much more talk than actual field trial experiments.

But which of these strategies are worth incorporating into your thermal operations?

If you implement new technology wisely, it can take your operation to the next level. If you do it wrong, you might go broke. You need to learn what others have already tried and measure their success and failure.

Taking thermal technology to the next level in the field is risky. No matter how many calculations you do; no matter how lab tests you conduct; implementing in the field will always bring surprises.

Look back at others' operations

It makes sense to see what others have done in the field. A field "look back" needs to consider the operator's intentions and their actual results.

The best way to conduct a look back is to read the application documents of others.

These documents show their intentions and promises to the regulator.

They also indicate the actual UWI locations of the proposed operation. Using these locations, you can review injection and production history and draw your own conclusions about success or failure of the field trial.

Ever wonder how edgy thermal technology worked in the field? You can find out by reviewing these ten applications by other operators. Just follow the links to get their application documents.

1. Forget steam. Use microwaves.

One operator has tried heating with radio waves. Similar to the principle of microwave oven heating, he's introducing radio waves into a formation and expects elevated temperatures.

If you'd like to try putting your bitumen bearing formation in a microwave oven, check out his application.

2. Electrical heating

What if you could heat a heavy oil zone directly with electricity? Brings visions of just hooking into the electrical grid and saving a lot of capital cost.

One operator proposed using leads strung down the well to get the heating elements to depth. He used these to heat water in-situ.

3. Heating with casing conduction

What if you could heat a heavy oil zone without injecting any steam? Think of the capital cost you could save by skipping the boilers.

This operator proposes to heat a bitumen zone using electrical current. He's using the casing as the conductor.

4. Electricity heating and solvent

One operator is implementing a C5+ solvent soak with his electro-thermal heating scheme. His application documents include the well location where he is testing this technology so you can watch the production spike during his test.

5. Making steam with produced water

One operator made a boiler than can handle produced water. His approved application shows cost cutting arguments for using such equipment.

6. Injecting Alkali in SAGD

This operator is testing several alkali compositions and concentrations. Alkali may react with organic acids in the reservoir to generate surfactant in-situ. The resulting surfactant should reduce interfacial tension and allow oil droplets to be more mobile in the reservoir.

7. Injecting bugs in SAGD

Yet another operator is using microbes in some SAGD pad startup procedures. In the application, he discusses corrosion, formation and perforation plugging, microbe population control and several other issues.

8. SAGD and CSS meet

One operator is injecting noncondensable gas injection in a SAGD pair and adding infill producers with a twist. The infill producers are operated on a cyclic steam huff and puff.

9. Temporarily abandoning a SAGD operation

One operator has decided to temporarily suspend operations. His SAGD scheme is taking a sabbatical. Check out his thoughts about how his scheme will recover when oil prices improve.

10. Toe to heel air injection

Another operator says that the toe-to-heel air injection (THAI) process failed in his pilot. He discusses the process, why he believed it failed, and what he'll try next.

We've given you 10 edgy technologies to review, but there are many more. In fact, here's one more interesting technology to help image steam chambers...

And one bonus...

11. Four-D Seismic delineates steam chamber

This operator included a discussion of 4D seismic technique and interpretation. He believes that 4D seismic images a steam chamber and helps confirm the bitumen thickness. He says a 4D seismic anomaly is created with the oil sand is heated to 60 degrees C.

We've given you references to 10 edgy thermal technologies -- and one bonus technology. This is more than cool technology. Some of these could drastically improve your thermal scheme.

You owe it to yourself and your investors to read the application documents that explore these pilot projects. You decide whether they will work for your field.

You can help yourself to their application documents by using our self serve, secure check out. Follow the links above to buy these documents now.

All these have been passed the theoretical phase and lab test phase. Each has been implemented in the field.

Each have been ground truthed with injector UWIs. You can read their application, then check out the actual results by looking at their patterns in Accumap.

Tags: Thermal, Heavy Oil

Granger Low   20 Mar 2017

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