Hot Oil Circulation to Improve Oil Recovery: Results of the First Pilot

摘要

A major challenge to production and stimulation is to send heat from the surface to the reservoir to reduce the oil viscosity. While steam injection is recognized as an efficient way to do so, to meet this expectation, Majus has developed the TOR technology. The aim is to improve the productivity of a well and to increase the recoverable reserves by sending heat into the reservoir by conduction with limited energy consumption and limited CAPEX. This is made possible with the use of a highly insulated coiled tubing which links the surface equipments to the downhole production drain. The usual fluid to convey energy is water heated and sent in the reservoir as steam to heat by convection. As mentioned in many papers, the technologies such as Huffn'Puff and SAGD show generally good results but there are some issues related to these technologies. Amongst them, the quantity of energy and water required and the need to treat the liquid produced. These are alleviated with this new system. The paper will present the innovative completion design, the fabrication process, the installation phase and the first results when applied on a horizontal well on a field in the Sultanate of Oman where the production increased more than threefold to reach 300 b/d. In a second part we will try to identify the typical wells where the process should give the same positive results.