STEAM FLOODING IN FRACTURED MEDIA: A REVIEW OF MODELLING AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES

SUBMITTED BY

Mohammad Haseeb Azam Student ID: 20500531

A Term paper submitted in Partial fulfillment of the Requirements of CHE 614 (Capillary and Transport Phenomena in Porous Media) Course

Chemical Engineering Department University of Waterloo

16th April, 2013

1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. 2. 3.

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 3 DESCRIPTION OF STEAM INJECTION PROCESS .................................................................. 4 BASIC CONCEPTS ....................................................................................................................... 4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Influence of Temperature ........................................................................................................ 5 Influence of Water Phase ........................................................................................................ 5 Influence of the Mineral Matrix .............................................................................................. 5 Influence of Oil Composition .................................................................................................. 6

4. 5.

OIL RECOVERY MECHANISM IN FRACTURED RESERVOIRS ........................................... 6 STEAM FLOODING IN HEAVY AND LIGHT OIL RESERVOIRS .......................................... 7 5.1 Results and Discussions .......................................................................................................... 7 Heavy Oil Reservoir Model............................................................................................. 7 Effective Mechanisms...................................................................................................... 8 Optimization of operational parameters ......................................................................... 8 Light Oil Reservoir Model ............................................................................................ 10 Effective mechanisms .................................................................................................... 10 Optimization of operational parameters ....................................................................... 10

5.1.1 5.1.1.1 5.1.1.2 5.1.2 5.1.2.1 5.1.2.2 6.

IMPROVEMENTS IN STEAM INJECTION PROCESS ............................................................ 12 6.1 6.2 6.3 Improved Operations ............................................................................................................ 12 Use of Additives ................................................................................................................... 12 Use of foams ......................................................................................................................... 13

7. 8.

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 13 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 15 List of Figures and Tables................................................................................................................. 17

1.

INTRODUCTION

Increase of oil consumption and price of the crude oil in the world, and declining oil supplies in recent years, has caused an increasing attention to heavy oil and extraheavy oil production methods (1). Heavy oil may be defined as oil with an API gravity of less than 20o and viscosity in the range of 100-10,000 cP (2). As the global energy demand grows, unconventional resources are the key solution to meet the ever growing demands as the conventional and light oil reservoirs are already depleted. New technologies for economical heavy oil recovery as an unconventional oil resource, has received more attention from the giant oil companies (3). Steam injection is one of the well known EOR processes which have successfully been used for the past few decades to improve the oil rate and recovery. It has wide applications for the recovery of light and heavy oils. Canada, Venezuela and United States, Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, China, Oman and Kuwait have the largest amount of reserves of heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs in the world (4) (2). In fact, a considerable portion of the heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs are naturally fractured reservoirs (one-third of total heavy oil world-wide) which are more complicated to produce than conventional reservoirs (5) (6). Current total world oil production from EOR is approaching 3 MMBD representing about 3.5% of the daily global oil production (7). Steam flooding is applied to heavy and extra-heavy oil reservoirs; it may be used in light oil reservoirs in which water injection does not work effectively. In Middle East fractured carbonates, the matrix rock is commonly oil-wet or mixed wet and therefore water flooding is not a feasible process (8). However, it should be noted that there are certain parameters which must be kept in mind for efficient and economical recovery i.e. steam-oil ratio, optimum steam temperature and steam quality (9) (4). The results in various studies have shown that steam injection process has great performance and efficiency in fractured systems. However, steam processes are not recommended in very high permeable fractured reservoirs due to high steam-oil ratio (SOR). Therefore, for the better understanding of the physics involved in the steam injection process, it is extremely important to understand the main recovery mechanisms such as: reduction of viscosity; thermal expansion; distillation; capillary imbibition; solution gas; generation of CO2; and gravitational drainage (10). The recovery mechanism in steam injection is based on reducing the viscosity of oil by transferring the heat from a hot fluid (steam), to the reservoir and making heavy oil and bitumen mobile so that they can easily flow towards the production well. Heating of the matrix will result in oil expansion, reduction of viscosity, solution gas drive and stream stripping of intermediate hydrocarbon components (11). This study focuses on steam injection in naturally fractured reservoirs. A naturally fractured reservoir is a reservoir which contains fractures that may have either positive or negative effects on fluid flow (4). In fractured system heat can be transferred by thermal conduction to the other areas of the reservoir which are not in contact with

steam. It is obvious that steam will flow faster through the fractures compared to nonfractured systems. Productive heavy oil carbonate fields can be grouped into two categories: 1) low matrix permeability, fracture dependent and 2) matrix permeability dependent production. Fracture enhanced, low matrix permeability production is dominant and occurs in Oman, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Egypt and includes producing fields such as Qarn Alam in Oman and Issaran and Bakr-Amer in Egypt (12). In Middle East fractured carbonates, the matrix rock is commonly oil-wet or mix wet and therefore water flooding is not a feasible process.

2.

DESCRIPTION OF STEAM INJECTION PROCESS

Steam drive involves injection of steam from well to well. It is usually designed as continuous flooding of the reservoir by steam until the oil/steam ratio decreases below the economic limit. Oil/steam ratio is usually in the range of 0.1-0.4 m3/m3. (13) Gas phase is present in steam injection; this causes distillation of the light components of the oil and their movement towards the cold part of the reservoir. Increasing the temperature of the oil reduces its viscosity, thus mobility is enhanced. Very low values of residual oil saturations (<5%) have been reported in the field (13). Displacement efficiency in steam drives can be very high as long as good sweep is obtained. Steam drive is a stable displacement process because of the condensable nature of the gas phase. In a steam drive process, oil gets contacted in several stages; first by cold water, then by hot water and the conventional light ends, and finally by steam.

3.

BASIC CONCEPTS

The effects of different factors on Thermo-Chemical alteration of reservoir rock and crude oil
Heating of the reservoir, generally leads to two kinds of chemical reactions: 1) Pyrolysis 2) Oxidation Pyrolysis reactions usually occur with heating in the presence of an inert gas and presence or absence of water phase. Oxidation reactions occur in the presence of oxygen in gaseous phase, in the liquid phase and on the surface of solids. But steam injection process does not involve using oxygen except in some conditions in which air is injected with steam into the reservoir for improvement of steam injections process, so pyrolysis reactions are the most probable reactions which may occur in the reservoir during steam injection. These reactions can be classified into three types (13):

1) Cracking: The cracking reactions involve the breaking of C-C bonds and the formation of molecules with lower molecular weights, thus lightening the oil involved in the process. A typical cracking reaction is as follows: Cn+mH2(n+m)+2 CnH2n + CmH2m+2

2) Dehydrogenation: In dehydrogenation reactions, the number of carbon atoms remain unchanged; only C-H bonds are destroyed, and unsaturated hydrocarbons are formed: CnH2n+2 CnH2n + H2

3) Condensation: Condensation between two hydrocarbons leads to the formation of a molecule with a higher molecular weight. When the reactants are alkanes and alkenes, condensation often leads to the formation of aromatic compounds. There are certain factors and conditions which affect the pyrolysis reactions, they are explained below: 3.1 Influence of Temperature Temperature is a major factor which influences the type of reactions which take place affects the amount of gas and solid in products. Reactions that take place at low temperatures (<350oC) are referred to as visbreaking while high temperature reactions are called cracking. The term visbreaking implies to reduction in oil viscosity. These kinds of reaction are characterized by the formation of products of reaction and their retention in liquid phase. This produces minimum amount of solids and liquids (13). Cracking reactions initiate at temperatures above 260oC and production of solids and liquids is significant above 350oC. Such high temperatures mostly occur in in-situ combustion in the coke-faction zone (13). The other important factor which affects the amount of gas and solid in products during high temperature reactions is the oil composition. There is an increase in weight% of C5-C15 fraction while the C16-C41 fraction decreases. Weight loss and gain is minimal below 260oC and increases dramatically above 350oC which indicates the domination of cracking reactions. 3.2 Influence of Water Phase Pyrolysis reactions sometimes involve water in the liquid or vapour phase. In such case, reactions are called aqua-thermolysis and can be source of H2S and CO2, which are effectively produced in certain thermal recovery operations. 3.3 Influence of the Mineral Matrix The mineral matrix of the formation may be modified by the heat provided during thermal recovery processes. Generally, heating of the mineral matrix can lead to two main effects:
5

1) Modification in rock composition: Mineral carbonates (such as dolomite CaMg(CO3)2, Siderite FeCO3 and Magnetite MgCO3) produce large amounts of CO2 upon heating and the decomposition starts considerably sooner in the presence of steam (13).
2) Effects of mineral matrix on cracking: Clay minerals have shown to have a

catalytic effect on cracking reactions, especially on coke formation. In addition, clays contribute greatly to the total available surface area. The presence of a mineral promotes chemical reactions involving water and reduces the difference in reactivity between crude oils (13). 3.4 Influence of Oil Composition The amount of coke can be related to the oil's thermal reactivity, which is influenced by the oil's geochemical composition. Conversely, the coke composition, determined by elemental analysis and infrared spectroscopy, depends on the temperature reached in the porous medium and not on the oil properties. The formation of coke follows a series of reaction steps; they may be represented as follows: Aromatics Resins Asphaltenes Coke Therefore the more the coke produced the less the amount of the asphaltene and plugging problems due to asphaltenes will reduce (13).

4.

OIL RECOVERY MECHANISM IN FRACTURED RESERVOIRS

It is believed that naturally fractured reservoirs (NFR) contain up to 25-30% of the world supply of oil. These reservoirs differ from non-fractured reservoirs in that the fractures provide flow paths with permeabilities that can be orders of magnitude higher than the remainder of the formation. Hence, the fractures can guide the fluid flow within the reservoir without contributing to its storage capacity (13). In order to recover oil from such reservoirs, a pressure gradient must be established within a matrix block on pore level. This pressure gradient then displaces the oil from one pore to the next and eventually, to the production well. It should be noted here, that this pressure gradient will not develop in all the cases i.e. with a high permeability fracture network, the pressure gradient will not advance by simply injecting the fluid in the well; as this would lead to poor sweep efficiency. The recovery of oil from naturally fractured reservoirs can be modelled as a two step process: oil is expelled from the matrix blocks through mechanisms that can impose a pressure gradient within each matrix block and then is swept through the fracture network to a production well by mechanisms that impose a pressure gradient within the fracture network (13).

5.

STEAM FLOODING IN HEAVY AND LIGHT OIL RESERVOIRS

Two separate numerical models were prepared to investigate steam flooding performance for the recovery of light and heavy oil. The heavy oil model is a Cartesian hypothesis model with properties of Cold Lake heavy oil reservoir in Canada and light oil model is a sector of an Iranian fractured light oil reservoir (8). All possible recovery mechanisms (viscosity reduction, steam distillation, thermal oil expansion and others) were simulated individually to measure the effectiveness of each recovery mechanism in total recovery of heavy and light oil during steam flooding. Also, operational parameters such as steam quality, steam flow rate and well perforation were optimized for both reservoirs.

5.1 Results and Discussions

5.1.1 Heavy Oil Reservoir Model (8) The Heavy oil model used in this study is basically a 3-dimensional hypothetical Cartesian model which is based on the properties of Cold Lake heavy oil reservoir. The properties of this reservoir are shown in Table 1. With the help of sensitivity analysis, a 30x30x15 Cartesian model is used to represent a quarter of a typical 2.5acre 9-spot inverted steam flood pattern in this reservoir. The fluid model used in this simulation study constitutes of water, dead oil and solution gas. Reservoir initial oil is composed of 89% dead oil and 11% of solution gas. Also, the initial reservoir GOR is 5.5 m3/m3. The relative permeability curves for this reservoir are added to the model. The reservoir is water wet and the oil relative permeability curve is calculated from Stones second model. There are four wells (three production and one injection well) in this model. Figure 1 shows the schematic of the simulation model. For simulation of steam flooding, the steam at the temperature of 300 oC and quality of 0.95% is injected to the reservoir. The minimum bottom-hole pressure for production wells is 3100 KPa and the maximum bottom hole pressure for injection well is 6000 KPa. The steam injection rate is adjusted to 100 m3/d for 10 years. The cumulative oil production and daily production rate for the period of simulation is shown in Figure 2. As shown in this figure, the rate of oil production and consequently the cumulative oil production are very low at the beginning of steam injection process. This is true because time is needed for the heat to reach all the reservoir parts and then the reservoir became warm. The result of this simulation study shows that the total cumulative oil production of this reservoir is 45415 barrels which is 65% of total original oil in place.

5.1.1.1 Effective Mechanisms For the recovery of heavy and light oil reservoirs in steam flooding process, various recovery mechanisms have been investigated and implemented. All of the recovery mechanisms are the same, but the efficiency and contribution of each mechanism in total recovery of each reservoir oil type is different. The oil recovery mechanisms of steam flooding are as follows (8) (11): Viscosity Reduction Steam distillation Thermal oil expansion Gas expansion and drive Relative permeability and capillary pressure variation

But only the first three mechanisms mentioned above are the main mechanisms in steam flooding process, so they are presented in this paper. The effectiveness of each recovery mechanism in total recovery of light and heavy oil is determined. In order to attain this result, five separate scenarios are chosen as follows (8): Run 1 when all possible recovery mechanisms contribute to total recovery. Run 2 when only viscosity reduction contributes to total recovery. Run 3 when only steam distillation contributes to total recovery. Run 4 when only thermal oil expansion contributes to total recovery. Run 5 when three main mechanisms dont contribute to total recovery. The relative contribution of each of the three main recovery mechanisms from Runs 1 through Runs 4 can be calculated, and Run 5 can be used to determine the contribution of other mechanisms. The result is shown in Table 2. As can be seen, the viscosity reduction mechanism is a main recovery mechanism and contributes to 80% of total recovery and thermal oil expansion and steam distillation are the next important mechanisms (8). Figure 3 shows the variation of contribution of each recovery mechanism with time. The results in this figure indicate that the viscosity reduction and thermal oil expansion are the main recovery mechanisms early in the injection process and after the 1800 day (when most of the recovery occurs) viscosity reduction dominates the recovery process (8). 5.1.1.2 Optimization of operational parameters A detailed sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the effect of input and modelling parameters before carrying out the simulation study. The important steam flood operational parameters include the following concepts (8).

 Steam injection rate Steam quality Injection well perforation Steam injection rate An increase in the steam injection rate results in a slight increase in the cumulative oil production. There are several criteria for determination of the best injection rate, including economical factors, steam production cost, steam generator capacity and cost, as well as injectivity, wellbore facilities, surface facilities, oil price, among many others (14). In this study, the best steam injection rate is optimized according to the steam-oil ratio and produced water. For this purpose, three injection rates have been investigated. The cumulative oil production for different steam injection rates is shown in Table 3. According to steam-oil ratio and produced water, an optimized value of 100 m3/day is chosen for the steam injection rate. Steam quality For determining the best steam quality, Steam quality of 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 0.95 were investigated. The results are shown in Table 4. The incremental oil recovery for additional steam quality is considerable. Therefore steam quality of 0.95 is chosen (8). Injection well perforation Well completion strategy is a very vital operational parameter. The best injection well perforation layers were determined for this reservoir using sensitivity analysis. Three different scenarios were studied, as follows (8): Case I: Production wells were perforated at top layers and injection well was perforated at whole layers. Case II: All wells were perforated at top layers. Case III: Production wells were perforated at bottom layers and injection well was perforated at top layers. The results are presented in Table 5. It can be clearly seen that Case III is the better perforation strategy than the others. This is mainly because the steam gravity is lower than other fluids in the reservoir and when injected from top layers can push the oil towards the production wells and prevents the gravity override (8).

5.1.2 Light Oil Reservoir Model The light oil reservoir model used in this case is one of Iranian fractured oil-wet carbonate reservoir. Some of the important properties of this reservoir are summarized in Table 6. In order to simulate steam flooding, a sector of this reservoir is selected. There are four wells in this sector which produce oil by natural depletion. The minimum bottom-hole pressure for this reservoir is 1200 psi. In addition, two new injection wells were drilled. Sensitivity runs were made for determination of their appropriate locations. The results show that the injection wells with five spot patterns have the highest ultimate oil recovery. Figure 4 shows selected sector with location of new injection wells (8). Comparisons were made between steam flooding (was injected for ten years from year 2018) and water flooding at the same conditions, the effectiveness and performance of both methods was recorded and analyzed. These results are shown in Figure 5. As shown in this figure, steam injection compared to water injection has higher cumulative oil production rate. Table 7 summarizes the final results. It should be emphasized that incremental oil production and recovery factor is counted with respect to 2010. These analysis show that naturally fractured reservoirs are not a good candidate for conventional EOR process like water flooding. The high fracture permeability prevents significant pressure differential across oil bearing matrix blocks (8). In Middle East fractured carbonates, the matrix rock is commonly oil-wet or mixed wet, so other methods are suggested instead of water injection. Therefore, the best alternative process which would improve oil recovery is steam injection process. One of the main reasons is that the heat from the injected steam can penetrate through regions (such as low permeability regions) via conduction where even fluids such as water are not able to do so. 5.1.2.1 Effective mechanisms To find the effective mechanisms in recovery of light oil reservoir through steam flooding, the same procedure was adopted as in the case of heavy oil reservoir. The results are shown in Table 8 and Figure 6 (8). It can be concluded from Table 8 that all three main mechanisms almost have the same contribution on recovery compared to the heavy oil reservoir, and viscosity reduction does not have significant impact on steam flooding. The variation of contribution of effective mechanisms with the time is shown in Figure 6. It is evident from this figure, that early in the process; thermal oil expansion is a dominant mechanism because thermal recovery due to heat conduction is achieved in the fractured reservoirs. After that, the two other mechanisms become more important. Viscosity reduction has more effect when heat penetrates to unswept area and steam distillation become more effective when the distillates bank reach the production wells (8). 5.1.2.2 Optimization of operational parameters The same operational parameters were investigated as in the previous case.

10

Steam Injection Rate The objective is to optimize the best steam injection rate according to steam oil ratio, produced water and gas oil ratio. For this purpose four injection rate were investigated. Just like the previous case, cumulative production was found to increase with an increase of steam injection rate. From the results it can be concluded that steam oil ratio of 1-1.7, GOR lower than 1000 SCF/STB and water cut lower than 50% gives exceptionable amount of oil, gas and water from the field (8). Therefore best injection rate was selected based upon these criteria. According to Table 9, an injection rate of 10000 bbl/day is the best injection rate for this reservoir. Steam quality In this part of the study, different steam qualities are investigated to determine the best specification. Steam quality of 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 0.95 were assessed. The results from this study confirm that, unlike heavy oil reservoirs, steam quality has no significant effect on oil production in this light oil reservoir (8). Therefore, for economic purposes, the steam quality is adjusted to a value as low as possible. This is especially justified because light oil reservoirs have low initial viscosity, and consequently do not require a large amount of latent heat in the application of the recovery method. The final simulation data for different steam qualities is summarized in Table 10, and a final selection of 0.8 ratio is made for this reservoir (8). Injection well perforation Three different scenarios were studied, as follows (8): Case I: Four bottom layers of injection wells were perforated. Case II: Four top layers of injection wells were perforated. Case III: All layers of injection wells were perforated. The results are given in Table 11, from which it can be deduced that Case II is the best perforation strategy. This can be explained in terms of steam, water and oil gravities. Out of these three components, steam has the lowest gravity; therefore it goes to the upper layers and pushes the oil down to the bottom layers. In addition, early water breakthrough can be delayed in this case. It should be noted that, although case III gave almost the same results, case II was chosen for this reservoir because of lower well completion costs (8).

11

6.

IMPROVEMENTS IN STEAM INJECTION PROCESS

Steam is lighter and more mobile than oil. As a result, one of the major problems facing steam injection is the poor sweep efficiency caused by gravity override and/or channelling of the steam through the most permeable parts of the reservoir (13). Therefore, it is clear that the economic success of steam injection process depends largely on sweep efficiency. Some other problems in the reservoir such as poor injectivity or bad interwell communication may also occur. Improvements can be broadly divided in two categories (13): a) Operational changes such as fracturing, use of horizontal wells, pressure cycling, selective completions or injection in underlying aquifers. b) Use of additives injected with the steam.

6.1 Improved Operations

Different methods for improved operations have been carried out at various locations around the world to test the efficiency of total recovery of oil. For example, selective completions have been tried in California and Venezuela. In this case, the main target was to be able to inject steam into the lower part of the interval of interest in order to reduce gravity override. Another method of injecting steam into underlying aquifers has been attempted in a few fields. This reduces the steam-oil ratios because of the heat lost in heating the water in the aquifer. Fracturing, either before steam injection or caused by the injection of high pressure steam, has been shown to be effective in bitumen fields as well as in heavy oil reservoirs. Horizontal wells have been used in several projects and seem to be a promising technique for improving sweep efficiency in thermal recovery operations as shown by numerical simulations (13).

6.2 Use of Additives

The use of additives is normally done along with steam i.e. Steam and additives are injected together simultaneously. Various combinations of gases have been suggested for use as an additive to steam. But not many fielded tests have shown promising results of economic success. Some tests have shown to improve the steam-oil ratio when air is injected with steam, probably due to in-situ combustion or some kind of exothermic oxidation reaction taking place. Theoretically, a combination of CO2 and steam could be beneficial to projects with highly viscous oils by reducing the oil viscosity via CO2 dissolution (This process occurs naturally in carbonate reservoirs) (13) .
12

Water-soluble additives such as surfactants have been widely used to enhance the sweep efficiency of steam injection operations or to try to modify the interfacial properties of the oil/water system and reduce residual oil saturation.

6.3 Use of foams

In addition to the fact that surfactants may improve near-wellbore oil flow by modification of the oil/water relative permeability curves and/or possible removal of solids, a reduction of steam mobility can be seen by the formation of foams (13). Foams can be defined as dispersions of gas bubbles separated by liquid films. These films are usually generated in porous media by snap-off mechanism, leaving behind and division mechanisms. The liquids films are normally unstable and will break quickly. As a result, surfactants are added to the liquid, thus improving the stability. Results show that foams are adequate in reducing gas mobility in a broad range of permeabilities but laboratory and field observations seem to suggest a greater effect in permeability zones when the porous medium tested is heterogeneous (example: naturally fractured reservoirs have a wide range of heterogeneity).

7.

CONCLUSION

Naturally fractured reservoirs hold over 20 billion barrels of heavy oil around the world which necessitates the need for better understanding of current EOR processes and future developments; and out of the available technologies, steam flooding has proved to be an efficient enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process for both light and heavy oils. But this largely depends on certain parameters such as steam-oil ratio, gasoil ratio, water-cut and optimum steam quality, which must be adjusted accordingly so as to optimize the steam-injection rate and get an economical and efficient recovery. The results show that increasing the steam-injection rate increases the cumulative oil production rate. Comparing the response of steam flooding to heavy and light oil reservoirs shows that the light oil reservoirs respond faster. Viscosity reduction is the main recovery mechanism in recovery of heavy oil, contributing to 80% of total recovery, while all three main recovery mechanisms have the same contribution to total recovery in the case of light oil. Unlike heavy oil reservoirs, steam quality has no significant effect on oil recovery for light oil reservoirs. Therefore, for economic reasons, steam quality should be kept as low as possible (8). The best injection well perforation strategy in both reservoirs was obtained with top layers completed. The pyrolysis reactions are the most probable reactions occurring in the reservoir during steam injection process and these are affected by the range of
13

temperature, presence or absence of water phase, mineral matrix and oil composition (13) . The recovery of oil from naturally fractured reservoirs takes place in two steps; first the required pressure gradient within matrix blocks to force oil into the fracture network is established and then in the next step the pressure gradient drives the oil from the fracture network to the production well. One of the major problems facing steam injection is the poor sweep efficiency caused by gravity override and/or channelling of the steam through the most permeable parts of the reservoir. Improvements can be broadly divided in two categories (13): a) Operational changes such as fracturing, use of horizontal wells, pressure cycling, selective completions or injection in underlying aquifers. b) Use of additives injected with the steam.

14

8.

REFERENCES

1. Study of Steam Injection in a Fractured Carbonate Heavy Oil Reservoir in Iran. Sh.Mohammadi, M.R.Ehsani, M.Nikookar, L.Sahranavard, A. Soleimani Garakani. Calgary : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2012. SPE Heavy Oil Conference. pp. 1-11. 2. Production Technology Selection for Iranian Naturally Fractured Heavy Oil Reservoirs. A. SHAFIEI, M.B. DUSSEAULT, H. MEMARIAN, B. SAMIMI SADEH. Calgary : CANADIAN INSTITUTE OF MINING, METALLURGY & PETROLEUM, 2007. Canadian International Petroleum Conference. pp. 1-16. 3. Experimental Investigation of Heavy Oil Recovery from Fractured Reservoirs by Secondary Steam Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage. A. Mohsenzadeha, M. Escrochia, M.V. Afraza, Yahya Al-Wahaibi, Sh. Ayatollahia. Calgary : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2012. SPE Heavy Oil Conference. pp. 1-18. 4. Experimental Investigation and Numerical Simulation of Steam Flooding in Heavy Oil Fractured Reservoir. Yaser Souraki, Mohammad Ashrafi, Hassan Karimaie, and Ole Torster. Anchorage : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2011. SPE Western North American Regional Meeting. pp. 1-11. 5. Steam Flooding of Naturally Fractured Reservoirs: Basic Concepts and Recovery Mechanisms. Mollaei A., and Maini. 1, 2010, Journal of Chemical and Petroleum Technology, Vol. 49, pp. 65-70. 6. Investigation of Recovery Mechanism of Steam Injection in Heavy Oil Carbonate Reservoir and Mineral Dissolution. Guo-Qing Tang, Art Inouye, Vincent Lee, Dustin Lowry, and Wei Wei. Bakersfield, California : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2012. SPE Western Regional Meeting. pp. 1-15. 7. EOR Potential in the Middle East: Current and Future Trends. Saad M. Al-Mutairi, Sunil L. Kokal. Vienna : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2011. SPE EUROPEC/EAGE Annual Conference. pp. 1-11. 8. Comparing the Performance and Recovery Mechanisms for Steam Flooding in Heavy and Light Oil Reservoirs. Mehdi Bagheripour Haghighi, Shahab Ayatollahi. Calgary : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2012. SPE Heavy Oil Conference. pp. 1-9. 9. Experimental and Numerical Study of Steam Flooding in Fractured Porous Media. Mohammad Ashrafi, Yaser Souraki, Hassan Karimaie, and Ole Torsaeter. Anchorage : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2011. SPE Western North American Regional Meeting. pp. 1-13. 10. Heavy-Oil Recovery Mechanisms During Steam Injection in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs. Mateo Hernandez J.A., Trevisan, O.V. Buenos Aires : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2007. 2007 SPE Latin American and Caribbean. pp. 1-11.

15

11. Experiments to Investigate Steam Injection in Light Oil Fractured. Marco Verlaan, Paul Boerrigter, Sjaam Oedai, Johan van. Tulsa : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2008. 2008 SPE/DOE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium. pp. 1-10. 12. An Overview of Heavy and Extra Heavy Oil Carbonate Reservoirs in the Middle East. Buza, John W. Kuala Lumpur : s.n., 2008. International Petroleum Technology Conference. pp. 1-8. 13. Investigation of Steam Flooding in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs. Alireza Mollaei, Brij Maini and Madjid Jalilavi. Dubai : s.n., 2007. International Petroleum Technology Conference. pp. 1-13. 14. Evaluation of Steam Injection in a Fractured Heavy-Oil Carbonate Reservoir in Iran. Bahonar M, Ataei A, Masoudi R, and Mousavi Mirkalaei S.M. Kingdom of Bahrain : Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2007. SPE Middle East Oil and Gas Show and Conference. 105299-MS.

16

List of Figures and Tables

(8)

Table 1: Properties of Cold Lake Reservoir

Table 2: The Contribution of effective mechanisms in recovery of heavy oil

Table 3: Final Simulation data for different steam injection rate for recovery of heavy oil

Table 4: Final simulation data for different steam quality for recovery of heavy oil

Table 5: Final simulation data for different well completion for recovery of heavy oil

17

Table 6: Properties of light oil reservoir

Table 7: Steam flooding performance for light oil reservoir

Table 8: The contribution of effective mechanisms in recovery of light oil

Table 9: Final simulation data for different steam injection rate for recovery of light oil

Table 10: Final simulation data for different steam quality for recovery of light oil

18

Table 11: Final simulation data for different well completion for recovery of light oil

Figure 1: The heavy oil simulation model

Figure 2: The cumulative and daily heavy oil production through steam flooding

19

Figure 3: Recovery contributions of effective mechanisms of heavy oil through steam flooding

Figure 4: The light oil simulation model

20

Figure 5: Steam flooding performance in comparison to water flooding and natural depletion

Figure 6: Recovery contributions of effective mechanisms of light oil through steam flooding

21