[CCoE Notice] PhD Dissertation Defense

[Knudsen, Rachel W]

The Petroleum Engineering Department

Invites the Cullen College of Engineering
To the
PhD Dissertation Defense
of
Guofan Luo



Topic: Single Well Completion and Management Strategies for Enhanced Recovery of Tight Oil Using Miscible Gas Injection



Date: Thursday, November 21, 2019



Location: Technology Bridge (Formerly ERP) Building 9, Room 123

Time: 8:00 am – 10:00 am



Committee Chair: Dr. Christine Ehlig-Economides

Committee Co-Chair: Dr. Michael Nikolaou



Committee Members:

Dr. Guan Qin, Dr. George K. Wong, Dr. Ganesh Thakur

Abstract

     Less than 10% primary oil recovery from horizontal wells creates a strong incentive for enhancing recovery from tight oil reservoirs in the US. Attempts at well to well displacement using water and gas as injection fluid failed in tight oil largely due to short-circuits along fractures connecting adjacent injection and production wells. As an alternative, operators have tried alternating miscible gas injection with production in a single well mimicking the huff-and-puff (HAP) technique that originated with steam injection in heavy oil wells. HAP field tests in the Eagle Ford play have shown limited success. To improve the production performance of HAP, this research focused completion designs enabling displacements between alternating injection and production fractures in a single well.  The single well configurations designate alternating fractures along the horizontal well as either injection or production. Two strategies are studied. The first strategy considers a continuous injection and production process in a single-well alternating simultaneous injection and production (SWASIP) configuration. The second strategy alternates injection and production as a single-well alternating production (SWAP) configuration.

     We use miscible carbon dioxide as the injection fluid. We use the GEM compositional simulator to model SWASIP and SWAP performance in a heterogeneous reservoir. We described the downhole completion components including monitoring and control devices required for managing many simultaneous displacements in the single well. SWASIP well management requires action in the event of a displacement short circuit, such as a cement leak. In contrast, the SWAP well configuration is more robust and will not suffer significant productivity or performance loss in the event of a displacement short circuit.

     Both SWASIP and SWAP significantly enhance oil recovery over HAP. SWAP recovery requires a longer time than SWASIP. However, SWASIP requires additional completion equipment for the well management that renders SWAP likely to be the more cost effective choice.

<mailto:riward at central.uh.edu>
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