Effects of the porous medium and pressure drawdown on the foamy-oil flow and heavy oil recovery in the CHOPS reservoirs

Western Canada has vast heavy oil deposits in many thin heavy oil reservoirs with less than 10-m main pay zones. The cold heavy oil production with sand (CHOPS) is the primary production process in the heavy oil reservoirs. However, a typical CHOPS process can recover only 5?15% of the initial oil-in-place. As a secondary heavy oil recovery method, waterflooding has had a limited success in the past. The major objectives of the proposed research project are to study the specific effects of the porous medium and pressure drawdown on the foamy-oil flow and heavy oil recovery and more importantly to identify the best primary production and cyclic solvent injection (CSI) processes in many thin CHOPS reservoirs.TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Peter Gu

Student:

Arifur Rahman

Partner:

Petroleum Technology Research Centre

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Oil and gas

University:

Program: