Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Abstract
High-amplitude, low-frequency pressure pulsing was
developed as a new oil well workover technique, and has been
used in >40 heavy oil wells in Alberta and Saskatchewan
during the period October 1998 to October 1999, with a good
success ratio. The method is particularly effective in initiation
sand production and in cases where mechanical skin arising
from blocked perforations, immobilized fines and asphaltenes
are responsible for a high skin factor.
Perforation blockage, restriction of near-wellbore flow
paths through fines accumulation, pore throat precipitation of
asphaltenes, and sand re-compaction around the well are all
thought to be responsible for rapid production rate declines in
many wells. In heavy oil wells, chemical treatments alone are
rarely useful, but large physical perturbations of the material
around the wellbore have been found to be effective in reestablishing production.
A downhole device was developed to apply large periodic
pressure pulses to the perforation face. This device also
permits injection of fluid at measured rates into the nearwellbore region while executing prolonged (9-12 hour) highamplitude perturbation. The action loosens mechanical skin,
allowing the source of flow blockage to be physically removed
through remolding and liquefaction of the sand around the
wellbore. This liquefied zone is produced when the well is
placed back on production, and in most cases the well is
rejuvenated. In some cases, wells that never produced
economic rates of oil because sand influx could not be
initiated were turned into reasonable producers after a pressure
pulse treatment. The method can also be used to deliberately
introduce treatment chemicals while reducing the negative
SPE 58718
SPE 58718
SPE 58718
SPE 58718
SPE 58718
SPE 58718
In the first case, the pressure surges are all of the same
magnitude, and the energy efficiency exceeded 50%. A
gradual build-up of pressure is evident, especially in the last
half of the excitation period. All pressure pulses show a p of
about 475-500 psi, indicating that the formation was being
substantially excited by the porosity dilation waves, and that
these were propagating far from the wellbore. Considering the
history of the well and the pressure pulse response, we do not
believe that there was a large volume of free gas behind the
casing, despite the relatively high local depletion, evidenced
by the initial pressure, which is less than 20% of the virgin
pressure.
The second case shows poor energy efficiency because the
formation simply provided little back-resistance to the
pressure impulses. This well had a reasonable history of
production, and was therefore also partly depleted in the
wellbore region. Nevertheless, after several hours, the
resistance to the pressure impulses increased somewhat and
the pressure began to rise.
We hypothesize that the
combination of the excitation and the addition of a few cubic
metres of reservoir oil helped to partly drive the gas bubbles
around the well back into solution. When this took place, the
efficiency of energy transfer increased.
The third example shows moderate energy efficiency;
about 25% of the potential energy was transferred into the
reservoir. For the first two excitation periods, about an hour
each, the p in each surge was only 60 psi. At about the 4
hour mark, a relatively rapid increase in the resistance to
pressure impulses in the reservoir resulted in an increase of the
energy transfer efficiency, with p on each pressure pulse of
about 300 psi. This apparently is evidence of the gas being
driven back into solution so that instead of simply
compressing near-wellbore gas, the formation was becoming
stiffer (i.e. less compressible) in its response to the pressure
surges. Pressure build-up, however, was very poor, and a
wellbore pressure increase of only 12 psi was recorded
between the beginning and the end of the pulsing.
In general, virgin wells that have had no depletion will
show extremely good resistance as well as pressure build-up,
even to the point of reaching the fracture pressure (this has
happened in two cases). Such cases are more similar to the
first example, Fig. 6. Conversely, wells that are massively
depleted and also have free gas will show very small p on
each pulse (as low as 10-30 psi), and only minor pressure
build-up, and then only if substantial amounts of load liquid
are used. The response of these wells is much poorer than the
examples shown in Fig. 7. Screening candidates carefully
tends to eliminate such cases.
Discussion
This article has concentrated on mechanisms, partly because
case histories have been introduced elsewhere (see articles in
the list of references) and because this method has a short
history (extended production records for more than 10 months
are unavailable at present). Nevertheless, the limited record to
date clearly shows that the new workover method has
SPE 58718
References
M.B. Dusseault and S. El Sayed. CHOP Cold Heavy Oil
Production. Proceedings 10th European Improved Oil Recovery
Symposium, EAGE, Brighton, August.
M.B. Dusseault, M.B. Geilikman and T.J.T. Spanos, 1998.
Mechanisms of massive sand production in heavy oils. Proc 7th
Int. Conf. on Heavy Oils and Tar Sands, Beijing, PRC, 14 p .
M.B. Geilikman, M.B. Dusseault, 1999. Sand Production Caused by
Foamy Oil Flow. Transport in Porous Media, 35: 259-272.
M.B. Dusseault and S. El-Sayed. [Accepted abstract for article on
CHOP], SPE IOR Symposium, Tulsa Oklahoma, 2000.
M.B. Dusseault, T.J.T. Spanos & B.C. Davidson, 1999. A new
workover tool - applications in CHOP wells. Proceedings CIM
PetSoc 50th ATM, Calgary, 11 pp (CD-ROM).
M.B Geilikman, T.J.T.Spanos, and E.Nyland, 1993. Porosity
diffusion in fluid-saturated media, Tectonoph.,217, 11-113.
V. de la Cruz, T.J.T Spanos, 1989. Thermomechanical coupling
during seismic, Journal of Geophys. R es., 94, B1, 637-642.
V de la Cruz, P.N. Sahay, T.J.T. Spanos, 1993. Thermodynamics of
porous media. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Part
A, A 443, 247-255.
B.C. Davidson, T.J.T Spanos, M.B. Dusseault, 1999. Experiments on
pressure pulse flow enhancement in porous media. Proc. CIM
PetSoc Regina Annual Mtg, Saskatchewan, 12 pages.
J. Wang, M.B. Dusseault, B.C. Davidson, T.J.T. Spanos, 1998. Fluid
enhancement under liquid pressure pulsing at low frequency.
Proc. 7th Unitar International Conference on Heavy Crude and
Tar Sands, Beijing, PRC, October 1998.
B.C. Davidson, M.B. Dusseault, T.J.T. Spanos, 1999. A dynamic
pulsing workover approach for wells. Proc. CIM PetSoc Regina
Annual Meeting, Saskatchewan, 10 pages.
T.J.T. Spanos, B.C. Davidson, M.B. Dusseault, M. Samaroo, 1999.
Pressure pulsing at the reservoir scale: a new IOR approach.
Proceedings CIM PetSoc 50th ATM, Calgary, 13 pp (CD-ROM).
vertical stress
concentration
initial stress (v ~ h)
v
porosity
h
po - initial
pressure
low seismic
velocities
initial
porosity
i ~ 30%
liquefied zone, plastic flow, gas induction and yielding zone, intact reservoir
Water-to-Oil Ratio
10
Luseland Field
- all vertical wells
several
anomalous
cases
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
Luseland Field
Reservoir Parameters
Bakken Formation (Jurassic,
unconsolidated sandstone)
500000
Oil production
400000
Water production
So = 0.72, Sw = 0.28, Sg = 0
300000
Stratum thickness: 4 - 15 m
Initial pressure: po ~ 6-7 MPa
Gas bubble point: pb po
200000
100000
Fig. 2: Total oil and water production to Dec 98, all vertical wells
52
49
46
43
40
37
34
31
28
25
22
19
16
13
10
0
1
600000
v redistribution
shale
opening fractures
water sand
shale
bed flexure
yielded zone
water
ingress
flank
water
cable to
surface
bypass
valve
BHP transducer
centralizers
surge cups
formation
open base
steel casing
liquid
perforations
1000
PWT
Pressure
Response
PE-TECH Inc.
Pressure
Pulse
Workover - All Stages
Ranger
10C-22-55-6W4
WELL
XX-XX-55-6W4M
900
Initial
BHP= =465.5
145
final pressure
psi psi
peak surge = 947.8 psi
Final
BHP = 465 psi
real time data
polynomial
trend = 948 psi
Peak
surge
800
700
Pressure (psi)
600
500
pf
400
300
200
pi
100
Successful pressure
build-up around well
0
0
10
Time (hours)
200
180
160
Energy (MJ)
140
120
100
80
60
>60% energy
efficiency
40
20
0
0.3
1.2
2.4
3.7
4.9
Time (hours)
6.0
7.5
8.7
PE-TECH Inc.
Pressure
PulseResponse
Workover - All Stages
PWT
Pressure
CNRL Wolf Lake 7D-28-63-8W4
WELL XX-XX-63-8W4M
550
initial pressure = 250 psi
final pressure = 406 psi
peak pressure surge = 514 psi
real-time pressure data
polynomial pressure trend
500
Pressure (psi)
450
400
final
350
300
250
initial
200
0
10
11
12
13
Time (hours)
Energy (MJ)
300
250
200
150
100
50
<15% energy
efficiency
0
0.0
0.6
1.7
3.1
4.4
4.9
6.3
Time (hours)
7.5
8.8
10.0
11.3
PWTInc.
Pressure
Response
PE-TECH
Pressure Pulse
Workover - All Stages
Koch
Exploration
Wolf Lake 9A-15-63-5W4
WELL
XX-XX-63-5W4M
450
initial pressure = 200 psi
final pressure = 238 psi
peak pressure surge = 414 psi
real-time pressure data
polynomial pressure trend
400
Pressure (psi)
350
S5
S4
S6
S3
300
final
250
200
initial
150
S2
S1
100
50
0
0
10
Time (hours)
Energy (MJ)
200
150
100
~25% energy
efficiency
50
0
1.1
2.1
3.4
4.6
Time (hours)
5.9
7.0
8.9