Protecting your thermal scheme from FTS disaster

While every operator wants to produce oil to surface, no one wants to see flows to surface outside of a well bore. Flow to surface (FTS) in thermal schemes has attracted attention recently by the AER.

One operator proposed carefully increasing operating pressure in some areas of his thermal scheme. He proposed several mitigation strategies including surveillance wells. This use of observation wells is starting to grow in the industry. You can get his application documents within moments through our self-serve, secure checkout.

Field wide maximum operating pressure (MOP) regulations try to protect against such flows in thermal schemes. But some operators are also using surveillance methods to ensure that there is no breaches in caprock strata.

Rather than using observation wells to watch pressure in the exploited zone, operators are starting to watch conditions in uphole zones. In these zones they hope to see no change but they are monitoring them anyway. They hold this out as positive proof that there are no leaks in the caprock integrity.

Surveillance methods include monitoring pressure in the uphole zones. Some operators also measure temperature and seismic events in formations above the caprock.

If you were watching all thermal applications you would have seen this operator's application months ago. AppIntel offers area alerts -- you get new applications delivered to your inbox.

Tags: Thermal, Heavy Oil

Granger Low  20 Sep 2016

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