Feasibility Study of ISC for KEM Naturally Fractured Carbonated Heavy Oil Reservoir in Laboratory Scale: Part I - 1D Simulation

The objective of this paper was evaluating the viability of the in-situ combustion (ISC) process for Kuh-E-Mond fractured heavy oil reservoir. Since KEM is a fractured reservoir, to consider the effect of fractures and their specific parameters on failure or success of ISC for KEM fluid and rock, the effect of fracture was included in the previous simulation study which has done former in the literature18.The simulation model presented here was a pre-requisite to justify laboratory experimental investigation of the in-situ combustion process in a fractured experimental model like literature14 for KEM carbonated naturally fractured reservoir.The performance of ISC is compared with a conventional, non-fractured system18 under similar rock and fluid properties, bulk volume, pore volume, hydrocarbon volume and air injection rate.Further, effect of different parameters like air injection rate, fracture spacing, fracture density, fracture opening size, fracture permeability, API of crude oil and rock type on ISC process results such as average temperature, ultimate oil recovery and front propagation shape has been considered.A wet combustion process also has been simulated for a fractured model. Simulation study showed that ISC is feasible for KEM in the case of appropriate fracture parameters, and even it may cause a slight increase in final oil recovery. The Computer Modeling Group’s thermal reservoir simulator ″STARS″ was used in this study

Keywords:

in-situ combustion , fractured reservoirs , EOR process simulation , heavy oil