Recovery of Heavy Oil by

Steam Injection

Navneet sharma
B.Tech (APE-II)
R040307031
Why to go for heavy oil ?
Potential additions to HC reserves come from two
sources
– New discoveries, and
– Existing fields

The ratio of discovery rate to consuming rate is one to

four barrel of conventional oil, thus, the gap between
discovery and consumption is big and may grow.

Therefore, we should focus on the existing wells,

including stripper wells.
Contd.
We are going for heavy oil because conventional oil
is drying up.

There is approx 6-9 trillion bbl of heavy oil in the

world in form of bitumen, Tar sands.

Since, current total world demand for oil is in the

range of 30 billion bbl per year with heavy oil we are
talking about 200-300 yrs worth of potential supply.
Definition of Heavy Oil

Heavy crude oil or extra heavy crude oil

is any type of crude oil which does not flow
easily.

It is referred to as "heavy" because its

density or specific gravity is higher.

 Heavy crude oil has been defined as any liquid petroleum with an
API gravity less than 20°, meaning that its specific gravity is greater
than 0.933.

This mostly results from crude oil getting degraded by being

exposed to bacteria, water or air resulting in the loss of its lighter
fractions while leaving behind its heavier fractions.
More about Heavy oil

In contrast, heavy oils typically have both a low API

gravity and high viscosity, such that they do not flow
naturally.

Production, transportation, and refining of heavy

crude oil present special challenges compared to light
crude oil.
Steam injection
Steam injection is an increasingly common method of
extracting heavy oil.

It is considered an Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method

and is the main type of thermal stimulation of oil
reservoirs.

Most commonly applied to oil reservoirs which are

relatively shallow and which contain crude oils which are
very viscous at the temperature of the native underground
formation.
 Steam Flooding in Heavy Oil
Reservoirs 1000

The main benefit comes 1000

from a large reduction in 100

100
the oil viscosity with

)cosity (cp)
10

increased temperature.

is
vp
10

viscosity(c
1

Large pressure gradients 0.1

1
also help mobilize oil. 100

Temperature (F)
1000

0.1

Lower interfacial tension , 100 1000

Temperature (F)
but it is secondary.
Two ways of steam injection:

I. Cyclic steam stimulation.

II. Steam flooding.

Cyclic steam stimulation
Contd.
 It is also known as Huff and Puff method, it consists of 3 stages :-

1. Injection – steam is injected for certain amount of time.

2. Soaking – steam injected is left for few days.

3. Production- oil is produced from the same well, since steam

injection will increase reservoir pressure and decreases S.G. And
make it less viscous to flow naturally.

 Production decreases as oil cools down and cycle is repeated again

when it reaches below economic limit.

 Recovery is approx only 20% of the original oil in place .

Steam Flooding
Contd.
It is also known as steam drive, in this some wells act as
injection wells some acts as production wells.

Two mechanisms are involved in this :

1. First to heat the oil to higher temperature and then to

thereby decrease its viscosity so that it more easily flows
through the formation toward the producing wells.
2. Second is the physical displacement of oil pushed to the
production wells.

 More steam is needed than the cyclic method.

 Recovery is 50% of OOIP.

Challenges
Cyclic steam stimulation

oRecovery conformance along length of horizontal well

bore .
oWell bore casing design due to high operating
temperature and pressure.

Steam drive stimulation

oRadial distribution of steam to mobilize bitumen.

oEffect of free water within formation on recovery and
process efficiency.
 Future Additions in Steam
Injection
Recovery of heavy oil by steam flooding combined with a nitrogen drive

•It decreases the cost of production of each barrel of oil because the cost of generating
nitrogen used for flooding the formation in the present invention is only one-third of
the price for steam generation.
•Also, the use of nitrogen can also prevent formation damage, well corrosion etc.

Liquid addition to steam for enhancing recovery of cyclic steam stimulation or

LASER-CSS

•It consists of mixing liquid hydrocarbons into the injected steam instead of injecting
such hydrocarbon as a separate slug in front of a steam stimulation cycle.
•The objective of this invention is to enhance field applications of Cyclic Steam
Stimulation (CSS) by contacting and mobilizing more of the bitumen with the same
amount of steam.