Even though heavy oil and bitumen are difficult to produce due to their high viscosity which can be reduced by heating, with increased oil price, the production of these heavy oils are seen viable thus the need for a model that would help make predictions for the future and also take into consideration areal and vertical sweep of hydrocarbons. As a result of a heterogeneity of reservoirs, numerical simulators are used to obtain consistent and significant solutions. For this work, a three-dimensional numerical reservoir simulator is developed for an expansion drive reservoir with a high viscous oil. A transient state heat system by conduction with an internal heat source is considered. A temperature simulator is first developed then coupled with a viscosity correlation after which it is then coupled with a diffusivity equation for a single phase flow of an expansion drive reservoir. All the governing equations are discretized using finite difference technique. Iterative linear solver with the aid of MATLAB code is used to solve the system of linear equations. The study evaluates the performance and the proficiencies of thermal recovery method which is the most common for high viscous oil. The results shows reasonable amount of energy being sustained for more recovery. Without heating, pressure decline is rapid but increasing heat source shows pressure decline being slow.
展开▼