A numerical reservoir model was created to optimize CO₂ Huff-and-Puff operations in the Bakken Shale. Huff-and-Puff is an enhanced oil recovery treatment in which a well alternates between injection, soaking, and production. Injecting CO₂ into the formation and allowing it to “soak” re-pressurizes the reservoir and improves oil mobility, boosting production from the well. A compositional reservoir simulator was used to study the various design components of the Huff-and-Puff process in order to identify the parameters with the largest impact on recovery and understand the reservoir’s response to cyclical CO₂ injection. It was found that starting Huff-and-Puff too early in the life of the well diminishes its effectiveness, and that shorter soaking periods are preferable over longer waiting times. Huff-and-Puff works best in reservoirs with highly-conductive natural fracture networks, which allow CO₂ to migrate deep into the formation and mix with the reservoir fluids. The discretization of the computational domain has a large impact on the simulation results, with coarser gridding corresponding to larger projected recoveries. Doubling the number of hydraulic fractures per stage results in considerably greater CO₂ injection requirements without proportionally larger incremental recovery factors. Incremental recovery from CO₂ Huff-and-Puff appears to be insufficient to make the process commercially feasible under current economic conditions. However, re-injecting mixtures of CO₂ and produced hydrocarbon gases was proven to be technically and economically viable, which could significantly improve profit margins of Huff-and-Puff operations. A substantial portion of this project involved studying alternative numerical methods for modeling hydraulically-fractured reservoir models. A domain decomposition technique known as mortar coupling was used to model the reservoir system as two individually-solved subdomains: fracture and matrix. A mortar-based numerical reservoir simulator was developed and its results compared to a tradition full-domain finite difference model for the Cinco-Ley et al. (1978) finite-conductivity vertical fracture problem. Despite some numerical issues, mortar coupling closely matched Cinco-Ley et al.'s (1978) solution and has potential applications in complex problems where decoupling the fracture-matrix system might be advantageous. / text

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:01:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 GertrudesOQ.pdf: 1545154 bytes, checksum: 8733f5db29d9ddd6780de7e34160f375 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-12-16 / Thermal methods made heavy oil production possible in fields where primary recovery failed. Throughout the years steam injection became one of the most important alternatives to increase heavy oil recovery. There are many types of steam injection, and one of them is the cyclic steam injection, which has been used with success in several countries, including Brazil. The process involves three phases: firstly, steam is injected, inside of the producing well; secondly, the well is closed (soak period); and finally, the well is put back into production. These steps constitute one cycle. The cycle is repeated several times until economical production limit is reached. Usually, independent of reservoir type, as the number of cycles increases the cyclic injection turns less efficient. This work aims to analyze rock and reservoir property influence in the cyclic steam injection. The objective was to study the ideal number of cycles and, consequently, process optimization. Simulations were realized using the STARS simulator from the CMG group based in a proposed reservoir model. It was observed that the reservoir thickness was the most important parameter in the process performance, whilst soaking time influence was not significant / Os m?todos t?rmicos viabilizaram a produ??o de ?leo pesado em campos considerados n?o comerciais pelos m?todos convencionais de recupera??o. A inje??o de vapor, em particular, veio a se consagrar ao longo dos anos e ? hoje uma das principais alternativas economicamente vi?vel para o aumento da recupera??o dos ?leos pesados. Dentre as ramifica??es da inje??o de vapor existentes a inje??o c?clica tem sido utilizada com sucesso em escalas comerciais em v?rios pa?ses, incluindo o Brasil. O processo envolve tr?s fases: a primeira ? a inje??o de vapor na qual o vapor ? injetado, dentro do po?o produtor, por um per?odo espec?fico de tempo; em seguida, o po?o ? fechado por um curto per?odo de tempo ( soak period ); e finalmente, o po?o ? recolocado em produ??o durante meses a anos. Esse processo constitui um ciclo. O ciclo ? repetido um n?mero de vezes at? que o limite econ?mico na produ??o seja alcan?ado. Independente do tipo de reservat?rio, a inje??o c?clica geralmente se torna menos eficiente ? propor??o que o n?mero de ciclos aumenta. Este trabalho visa analisar a influ?ncia de algumas propriedades de rocha e reservat?rio na inje??o c?clica de vapor a fim de estudar o n?mero ideal de ciclos e, conseq?entemente, otimizar o processo. Foram realizadas simula??es, utilizando o simulador STARS do grupo CMG, a partir de um modelo de reservat?rio proposto. Observou-se que o efeito da espessura do reservat?rio foi o par?metro que mais influenciou no desempenho do processo, enquanto que para o tempo de soaking essa influ?ncia n?o foi significativa