Improving Oil Recovery in Offshore Heavy Oil Underlain by Large Aquifer

Abstract Many offshore heavy oil reservoirs underlain by large aquifer are developed through cold production method: horizontal wells, with water coning/cresting being a major concern. Inflow Control Devices (ICDs) are often used to delay the water breakthrough by balancing the well inflow along the well section. However, ICDs have difficulties to mitigate the water coning/cresting after water breakthrough, leading to water bypass oil, premature well abandonment and low oil recovery. In this study, we propose the use of a dual completion technology, Bilateral Water Sink (BWS), assisted with ICDs to mitigate water coning/cresting in high water cut wells, therefore improving oil recovery for offshore heavy oil underlain by large aquifer. To investigate the reservoir performance under this new production technique, a series of experiments were conducted in a scaled Hele-Shaw model, similar to a cross-section of horizontal wells. Identical flow behavior at each cross-section perpendicular to the well axis were assumed. The experiments resemble to the situation in which the ICDs have been successfully implemented to provide a uniform flow along the entire well section. The oil recovery, water cut and reservoir pressure were measured in each runs to quantify the effects of BWS wells on water coning/cresting mitigation and improving oil recovery. The experimental results show that while ICDs mitigate the non-uniform production profile along the horizontal well section, BWS wells mitigate the water coning/cresting by dynamically modifying the pressure distribution in the reservoir. Experimental results also verify that the previously derived theoretical rates in BWS can efficiently suppress the water coning/cresting after water breakthrough. The quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate that BWS could reduce the water cut from over 95% in high water cut horizontal wells to less than 40 % and improve the heavy oil recovery about 4-6 times compared with that of conventional horizontal wells. Those findings provide a new insight into offshore heavy oil production mechanism. Because of BWS's ability of converting an original bottom water drive system to a more effective edge water drive system, low water cut and high oil recovery can be achieved by utilizing the reservoir energy without using of heat.