Single well modeling and field validation of heavy-oil well stimulations using nanofluids

Single well modeling and field validation of heavy-oil well stimulations using nanofluids

Crude oil

Viscosity

Petroleum industry

Sensitivity analysis

Finite volume method

Heavy oil production

Oil wells

Petroleum transportation

Offshore oil well production

Newton-Raphson method

Nanofluidics

Wetting

Nanoparticles

Oil well flooding

Well stimulation

Engineered nanofluids were designed to reduce oil viscosity and to restore wettability in heavy oil formations (Zabala et al. 2016). Incremental production rates, between 50% and 150%, were registered after injecting the nanofluids in 4 wells in two heavy oil fields of the Llanos Basin in Colombia (Zabala et al. 2016). A rigorous mathematical model of the interaction of nanoparticles in heavy-oil systems was developed by Mozo et al. (2018). The model accounts for transport and retention of nanoparticles, wettability alteration and oil viscosity reduction. The model was developed for 1D-linear flow in order to calibrate the model parameters with core-flooding experiments. In this work, we extended the model to radial models in 3D in order to simulate the injection, soaking and production stages of a nanofluid injection in a well. The equations were discretized using the finite volume method. The non-linear equations were sorved using the Newton-Raphson method. Two wells of the pilot study were simulated, showing a good agreement with field measurements of oil production. Since the model accounts for the underlying physical and chemical processes, the deployment of a well stimulation can simulated and evaluated using the developed tool. We simulated different nanofluids injection scenarios at reservoir scale in order to assess the impact of unknown model parameters as well as main operating conditions on the incremental oil production. The sensitivity analysis results provides important information for designing experimental and field protocols for model tuning and validation, as well for designing effective surveillance activities related to the pilot / field applications. 2019 European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers, EAGE. All Rights Reserved.

20th European Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery, IOR 2019, April 8, 2019 - April 11, 2019

2019

Mejia, J.

Zabala, R.

Valencia, J.

conferencePaper

10.3997/2214-4609.201900133