Toe To Hill Air Injection Process, a Review of Design Methods and Programming the Methods

MOHAMMAD KAZEMI PETE 7232 TERM PROJECT REPORT 13/02/2012

Instructor: Dr. Rao

Introduction

Thermal oil recovery is defined as a process that deliberately transfers heat into the reservoir to increase the ultimate oil recovery primarily by reducing the viscosity and thus increasing the mobility of the oil [1]. These techniques include steam injection and in-situ combustion projects. In steam injection process heat from steam drastically reduces the viscosity of the oil. There are many variations of this process including cyclic steam injection (Huff & Puff), steam flooding, and steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) which they have been the most widely used recovery methods of heavy and extra heavy oil reservoirs. On the other hand, in-situ combustion (ISC) process was patented in 1920 in USA. Since 1950 more than 162 ISC field pilot projects have been in operation [2]. Table 1 shows the commercial ISC processes.
TABLE 1- COMMERCIAL IN-SITU COMBUSTION PROCESSES [2]
Field, Country Suplacu de Barcau, Romania Balol, India Santhal India Bellevue, Louisiana, USA Start Date 1971 1997 1997 1970 Inj. Press. (psi) 150 - 200 1300 - 1600 1200 - 1500 60 No. of Inj. Wells 111 30 30 15 No. of Prod. Wells 736 75 105 90 Daily Oil Prod. By ISC (bbl/day) 9000 4400 4000 300 AOR (scf/bbl) 14000 5600 5600 15000 Expected Oil Recovery 52 36 36 60

Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI) is one of the new in-situ combustion processes that combine a horizontal production well and a vertical air injection well places at toe [3]. Like CSS and SAGD, THAI technology uses heat to reduce the viscosity of oil; however, the heat is generated underground by the combustion of the small portion of the oil in the reservoir employed exclusively by Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd. In THAI technology a vertical well is completed in upper portion of the reservoir and a horizontal well is completed in lower portion of the reservoir as shown in figure 1. Rather than steam, THAI technology injects air into the reservoir and relies on underground combustion of the reservoir oil to produce heat and increasing the mobility of it. The combustion is not a bonfire, but rather more like a charcoal fire, very hot (400 to 600 degree C) without flames. Petrobank claims that THAI burns 10 percent of oil in place to accomplish the task. The process is such that the oil is first heated to 100 degree C using steam. Once the critical temperature is reached the oil is ignited and continuous injection of air is performed to keep oil burning. The burning oil creates additional heat which makes the heavy oil flow more easily, and the combustion gases drive the flowing oil toward and up a set of production wells without any pumping. Petrobank claims a recovery of 70 to 80 percent for THAI processes. The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that some 8.9 trillion barrels of heavy oil and bitumen resources exist on the planet [4]. Some of heavy oil and bitumen is actually already being extracted in the Canadian tar sands, the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela, and places such as the Kern Oil Field in southern California; they are therefore included in current reserves. But if even an additional 10 percent of those resources became extractable through the use of THAI, that would add 700 billion barrels of reserves (assuming an 80 percent recovery rate). That's a significant amount when you consider that the USGS mean estimate for ultimately recoverable oil worldwide is around 3 trillion barrels. The estimates of more pessimistic observers such as Association for the Study of Peak Oil founder Colin Campbell is around 2 trillion barrels. Neither estimate includes deposits such as the Canadian tar sands [5]. Besides its presumed efficiency, the THAI process has several other advantages: 1) a small land footprint, 2) a relatively small need for external water and fuel at startup, 3) the upgrading of the heavy oil into lighter oil while it is in the ground which lowers refining costs, 4) the generation of electricity for site

power using combustion gases from the wells for fuel which also means those gases aren't simply vented into the surrounding area, and 5) a very high EROI of about 56 if you don't count the burning of the oil in the deposit (which I don't think we should) or the naphtha used to dilute it for pipeline transport (which is ultimately separated and recycled). There are not much projects active using THAI. Table 2 shows some of current active THAI projects in Canada. These projects are employed by Petrobank Company.
TABLE 2- THAI UPDATES IN CANDA [6]
Project Kerrobert Unrecovered OIP (bbl) 50 billion Production Rate (bbl/day) 236 Region Saskatchewan

May River

2 billion

10000-100000

Alberta

Dawson

44 million

25000

Alberta

This study will focus on the engineering of the THAI projects and provide a spreadsheet to design the THAI projects using the already existing methods.
Performance Parameters of THAI Projects

Fuel Deposit. The quantity and type of fuel deposit is one of the important parameters in performance of THAI projects. It is expressed as pounds of fuel consumed per cubic feet of formation and it determines how much heat is generated. It also have effect on other parameters such as amount of air required, rate of burning front advance, the rate of oil recovery, and project life [7]. Laboratory combustion tube test is needed to calculate the fuel deposit. It is a function of crude oil properties, oil saturation, formation permeability, and temperature in the combustion zone. Air Requirements. It is defined as the volume of air required to burn a unit volume of the reservoir and derived based on stoichiometry analysis of gas produced from combustion tube. This parameter determines the compression capacity needed and hence, is one of the important economic parameters in designing THAI. It is a function of the amount of hydrogen and oxygen in the fuel and the ratio of carbon dioxide carbon monoxide produced by the combustion. Air Flux. Since all the fuel must be burned, the combustion front can only move as fast as air is supplied. As the air flux decreases combustion temperature decreases and if the air flux decreases further the processes approaches a point where the heat loss exceeds the rate of heat generation. So the air flux is a function of both the fuel deposition and heat losses. Air-Oil Ratio (AOR). If we look at the designing of THAI in an economic prospect, the most important parameter is the AOR. This parameter is a measure of the quantity of air that must be injected to recover a barrel of oil. It is a function of the oil in place and the fuel burned. Injection Pressure. One the major cost of air injection processes is to pressurize the air. The size of compressor needed is determined by both the air flux needed and the discharge pressure of the air. The injection pressure is a function of primarily permeability of the formation to air, air injection rate, well spacing, and formation depth. Oil Recovery Rate. As discussed Petrobank claims a high recovery factor of oil, ranges between 70 to 80 percent, for THAI projects. This recovery factor is for laboratory experiments whereas in the field the

recoveries are lower due to lower horizontal and vertical sweep efficiencies. Several authors derived different methods to calculate the recovery of in-situ combustion processes. This will be addressed in the later section.
THAI Project Design Methods

In this part the available methods for designing an in-situ combustion project are presented briefly. Several authors suggested different analytical models and all of these models are based on reported field performance data. These methods that will be described are Nelson and McNeil, 1961; Gates and Ramey, 1980; Brigham et al, 1980; Fassihi et al, 1981. Nelson-McNeil (1961). They presented an engineering procedure to evaluate the performance of a dry insitu combustion project. They made a lot of assumption in their method but using a large field data makes their method more reliable [10]. They derived different equations to calculate total project air requirement, air injection rate, total oil recovery, and oil production rate. Fuel combustion and air requirement are calculated based on laboratory experiments. Nelson and McNeil for calculation purpose introduced a dimensional flow term to calculate the air injection rate necessary to achieve a given sweep efficiency of the combustion zone. The mathematical equations to calculate the parameters are not described here. A spreadsheet program was written to calculate the air requirement, air injection rate program, total expected oil recovery and oil production. Schematic of the spreadsheet is shown in figure 2 and 3. The input data is shown in table 3.
TABLE 3. INPUT DATA TO SPREADSHEET PROGRAM FOR NELSONMCNEIL METHOD
Reservoir Input Pattern Area Distance between injection and production wells Formation thickness Formation temperature Production bottomhole pressure Porosity Specific permeability Oil saturation Water saturation Volumetric sweep efficiency Production well radius Areal sweep efficiency Burning front advance rate Maximum frontal advance rate Laboratory Data Input Fuel consumes of reservoir per ac-ft Air requirement lb/ac-ft scf/ft3 acre ft ft F Psia % md % % % ft % ft/day ft/day

Although Nelson-McNeil is the only method that gives the air injection program it has some limitations. First of all it requires experimental combustion tube data such as fuel deposit and air requirement. Also Nelson McNeil procedure may be used to quickly compute expected production performance for an ISC project with characteristics similar to those of Wolf Lake (The reservoir in which the method is derived based on that).

Gates and Ramey (1980). In 1980, they present a volume burned method for calculating the air-oil ratios and oil recovery as a function of volume of the reservoir burned. The method is based on laboratory data, pilot, and field data [11]. They showed that several factors influenced the oil recovery- volume burned relationship, including initial oil and gas and fuel concentration. The fuel concentration is the largest factor by far in determining the air requirement. The fuel concentration increases as the oil gravity decreases. When the leading edge of the burning front arrives at producing well, excess air which bypassed the burning front will be produced. The required input data for Gates and Ramey method is shown in table 4.
TABLE 4. REQUIRED INPUT DATA USING GATES AND RAMEY METHOD
Reservoir Input Data Initial oil in place Initial gas saturation

Laboratory Data Input Fuel concentration Air required to burn the fuel Oxygen utilization

These data, together with various graphical correlations can be used to estimate air-oil ratio, instantaneous oil rate, and cumulative oil production. The reliability of the method is presently limited to reservoirs with characteristic similar to those of the field data that they used (that is 13 degree API, high permeability of 3000 mD, high porosity of 34 percent, and high oil content of 1700 bbl/ac-ft). Also Inability to directly address the influence of many reservoir specific parameters limits the applicability of the model to THAI process [8]. Fassihi et al. (1981). They developed an algorithim based on Gates and Ramey method and presented a set of equations to quickly estimate the oil recovery, AOR, oil rate, and economical limit of in-situ combustion processes. A spreadsheet program is written to use Fassihi equations and predicting the oil recovery and AOR [9]. A schematic of the spreadsheet is shown in figure 4. Consequently figure 5 shows the results from the program. From this figure it can be observed that as the burned volume increases for specific gas saturation the recovery of oil increases. Also the results of the method can be compared to the field results in the same figure. It can be observed that the method has a good agreement. Satman-Brigham (1980). They correlated the injection production history from 12 dry combustion projects and presented two correlations to predict the field oil recovery of dry in-situ combustion processes [12]. An analytical method to describe heat transfer processes and move of the steam plateau ahead of the combustion zone was developed and was verified by the laboratory combustion tube runs. From the two correlations that were derived, second correlation was proved to be better but is limited to some ranges of the parameters. In order to find the correlations cumulative incremental oil production (CIOP) of 12 fields were plotted against the cumulative air injection (CAI). Since in combustion projects the oxygen utilization rarely reaches 100 percent, they divide the abscissa by rock volume and multiply it by oxygen utilization. Also some of the oil is burned and is not available for recovery. So the ordinate was modified by adding the fuel burned to the CIOP (Figure 6). Finally by accounting the formation thickness, oil saturation, and oil viscosity they derived the new correlation shown in figure 7.

Conclusions

Toe to Heel air injection processes is a new thermal recovery which is not developed much. There are not many active THAI projects and the reason might be because of the failed pilot field projects. Engineering of THAI projects was studied in depth and spreadsheet program was written to design air injection projects. The only method that designs the air injection program as a function of time is Nelson-McNeil method. All of the methods have the limitation that they should be used in reservoir conditions which are similar to that of correlation was derived. So in order to use the methods one first should check the reservoir properties with the reservoir properties in which the correlation was derived and then select one of the correlations Good agreement between the combustion tube tests and correlation derived by Gates and Ramey was observed.

Fig. 1-THAI process (Source: Petrobank Energy and Resource)

Fig. 2- Schematic of the spreadsheet to calculate the recovery factor using Nelson-McNeil method.

Fig. 3- Designing the air injection program using Nelson-McNeil method

Fig. 4- Schematic of the spreadsheet to calculate the recovery factor using Fassihi et al. method.

Fig. 5- Left: Oil recovery calculated using the Fassihi et al. method. Right: Oil recovery vs. volume burned for laboratory combustion tube runs (After Fassihi et al.).

Fig. 6- Effect of fuel burned, rock volume, and oxygen utilization on cumulative incremental oil production (After Satman et al., 1981).

Fig. 7- Correlation curve for dry in-situ combustion field cases (After Satman et al., 1981).

References
[1] Prats, Michael. "Thermal recovery." (1982). [2] Turta, A., J. Lu, R. Bhattacharya, A. Condrachi, and W. Hanson. "Current Status of the Commercial In Situ Combustion (ISC) Projects and New Approaches to Apply ISC." In Canadian International Petroleum Conference. 2005. [3] Bloomer, Adam, Kalinga Jagoda, and Jeffrie Landry. "Canadian oil sands: How innovation and advanced technologies can support sustainable development."International Journal of Technology Management & Sustainable Development 9, no. 2 (2010): 113-132. [4] http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1084/ [5] http://scitizen.com/future-energies/will-toe-to-heel-air-injection-extend-the-oil-age-_a-14-3449.html [6] www.marketwire.com/press-release/petrobank-ramps-up-thai-operations-tsx-pbg-1098375.htm [7] Sarathi, Partha S. "In-situ combustion handbook--principles and practices." (1998): 424. [8] Kulkarni, Madhav M., and Dandina N. Rao. "Analysis of the Novel Toe-To-Heel Air Injection (THAI) Process Using Simple Analytical Models." (2004). [9] M.R. Fassihi, B.D. Gorban, and H.J. Ramey. An algorithim for computing in-situ combustion oil recovery performance (1981) [10] Nelson, T.W. and J.S. McNeil (1961), How to Engineer an In-Situ Combustion Project, Producer Monthly, (May) pp. 2-1 1. [11] Gates, C. F., Ramey Jr., H. J., A Method for Engineering In-Situ Combustion Oil Recovery Projects, SPE 7149, Journal of Petroleum Technology, 1980, pp. 285 [12] Satman, A., Brigham, W. E., Ramey Jr., H. J., An Investigation of Steam Plateau Phenomenon, SPE 7965, 1979 California Regional Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME in Ventura, California April 18-20 1979.