Sensitivity Analysis on Oil Recovery Improvement Through Application of Fracture-Assisted Steamflood

The most common recovery method for heavy oil reservoirs is steam injection, which is one of the most effective thermal recovery processes. However, the application of steam injection comes with many challenges, for instance unexpected faults, heat transfer efficiency, and less exposure between oil and steam. The effectiveness of steam injection decreases with the lower exposure of oil to steam. One way to tackle this problem is by applying hydraulic fracturing to increase the surface area of oil to steam. This fracture-assisted steam flooding process is a rising new technique in which a path is created between injection wells and production wells. In this paper, the effects of a hydraulically fractured reservoir in the steam injection process are simulated and evaluated using a commercial simulator. The focus of this research is to find the best fracture properties by sensitivity tests. The effects of the steam properties are also examined. Three scenarios are used to illustrate the steam injection method: normal reservoir model, hydraulically fractured reservoir model, and horizontal injector wells. The use of hydraulic fracture from the model results in a 20% increase of oil recovery compared to the normal reservoir model. The parameters used for sensitivity tests are fracture parameters such as fracture length and fracture width, and steam properties. The sensitivity tests indicate that parameters such as injection pressure and fracture scheduling have a big impact on increasing the oil recovery during the fracture-assisted steam flooding process. The optimum result is generated from the fracture-assisted steam flooding scenario with a sensitivity of fracture schedule and higher injection pressure. This study proves that improvements in the effectiveness of the steam injection process in heavy oil reservoirs can be achieved. It also presents a unique approach to improve steam-oil exposures by applying horizontal injector wells. This paper introduces the effect of an alternative approach to apply fracture-assisted flooding in the steam injection process. The paper also discusses the best scenario for steam injection by combining the sensitivity of steam and fracture parameters. Both combinations will affect the increase of oil recovery by 25-30% from the base case scenario.